Bhubaneswar
Out in the fields, children can make a game of any responsibility.
By the time harvesting is complete, the farms are dotted with mounds of paddy in ‘dhaan khal’ — spaces where the crop is kept in heaps. Youngsters are given the duty of watching over them. That’s where the game begins.
The Saora tribal children in Odisha’s Nuapada play Gali Mankad, roughly translated as ‘monkey of the lanes.’ It is a ‘chase-and-touch’ tribal game where two groups, pitted against each other, play with a bamboo stick. It’s easy to catch sight of 10-15-year-olds running among the heaps of harvest. And mind you, it is a boys-only game.
To start things, one group throws the stick as far away as possible and then rushes to climb nearby trees. The other group, meanwhile, runs to retrieve the stick. One of the boys, who retrieves the stick, then tries to touch the ‘monkeys’ up in the tree with it. The ones up in the trees leap to different branches to avoid being tagged. Whoever does get touched by the bamboo becomes the next den.
Dayanidhi Gauda, secretary of Dayanidhi Foundation, tells The Indian Tribal, “The tribal game is probably called so because the boys play being monkeys in familiar surroundings of their village.”
He says this is one of the many tribal games of yore that has slowly lost its popularity and charm, as youngsters these days, even in tribal and rural settings, are mostly hooked to cricket or mobile phones. Preserving such traditional games and sports is the need of the hour, he says.
