Kreedaa Kaushalya - battle royale

The inaugural day, May 10 of Kreedaa Kaushalya, the celebratory Mela of traditional board games organized by Ramsons Kala Pratishtana (RKP)every year since 2005 was the scene of a battle royale with a six year old doing his best to beat his mother at Pagade by attempting to bend the rules a little.
The venue was the RKP’s Pratima  Gallery located above Aamarapali showroom on the Nazarbad main Road.
The six year old decided once well into the game  that he could make up a few rules as he went along  and caught red-handed by his sister, was about to be beaned with an umbrella by  his mother, sending onlookers into peals of laughter.
Then the beastly kid tried another tack. Play two games at the same time.
 The tigers and goats with his older sister and Pagade with his mother at the same time. Rules were flouted with impunity as the kid steam-rollered his way to victory that was suitably crowned by tap on his head by the umbrella wielded by his mother.
The sight of this family having a whale of a time was enough to encourage  another family to sit down and play a game of tigers and goats.
More chaos with  good natured squabbling lent an atmosphere of joy which soon infected other visitors.
The display of varieties of board games , from cloth based ones coffee tables that doubled as pagade and chess board, this was a feast for the ultimate  gamesman or games-woman.
Ranged alongside boards were Kalamkari game board sets of Aadu-Huli, Dash Guti, Chauka Bara, Snakes and Ladders , Solapur handwoven games board sets of Huli-Kuri, Aadu Huli and Chauka Bara, Batik Chauka Bara sets  as well as silk embroidery Chauka Bara sets, Solapur Hand woven Nine Mens’ Morris sets, Kalamkari Panchi sets, Solapur Hand woven Sepoy Mutiny sets and of course a variety of Aluguli sets in rosewood, inlaid onto to  miniature coffee tables and four-handed chess sets.
 This four handed chess set is attributed to Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar III, the Master of the Board.
There was also  a huge at least six feet by six feet chess set that could be folded into squares. The King, Knight and elephant were more than 10 inches tall while the pawns were about six inches tall. All the chessmen were intricately carved  figurines.
There were several other chess boards that were carved with inlay work onto smaller chess boards.
The exhibition and sale of these artistic traditional game boards will conclude on May 26.
Ramsons Kala Pratishtana hopes that the  the next year’s edition of
Kreedaa Kaushalya will include a board games tournament first at the Mysore District level, followed by State level and National level.
The Kreedaa Kaushalya al fresco tournament described at the beginning of this blog was not officially authorised by Ramsons Kala Pratishtana but such was the infectious gaiety that the mini arena does not exclude anyone from taking part.
The only credo is the love for board games  and the only language is the language of the games.

Why Play Games?

If you want your child to learn and also have fun at the same time, that too at a fraction of the cost, play a board game, say experts.

A 2007 study by Carnegie Mellon University showed in a group kindergarten children playing a board game with numbers, such as Snakes and Ladders, helped them improve their performance on mathematical skills.

A board game is a game in which counters or pieces are placed, removed, or moved on a pre-marked surface or 'board' according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve. Early board games represented a battle between two armies and most current board games are still based on beating opposing players in terms of counters, winning position or accrual of counters.

For majority of board games, any plain flat surface can become a makeshift board game when a game pattern is drawn on it with a piece of chalk or charcoal or a sharp object. Any small enough objects like pebbles or twigs or seeds or bangle slivers can be improvised as game counters while cowries or split tamarind seeds serve as dice. At the end of the gaming session, the board and other gaming paraphernalia are abandoned. Another time and another place, a new gaming session starts with the drawing of a new game pattern. But for games like Chess, Pachisi and Snakes and Ladders, it is quite difficult to prepare game boards by oneself and have to rely on readymade boards and pawns.

Kreedaa Kaushalya 2013 - Brochure

Ramsons Kala Pratishtana

invites you to

Kreedaa Kaushalya

a summer biennale of traditional board games of India

10 to 26 May 2013

10 am to 7 pm

Pratima Gallery

91, 1 Floor, Above Aamrapali Sarees

In front of Reliance Fresh

Nazarbad Main Road, Mysore 570010

T: 0821-2445220. M: 9880111625

A lonesome Sita sitting beneath the Ashoka tree, wakes up from a reverie in which her beloved Rama has come to her rescue. Indeed since Hanuman's visit and his word that he would return with Rama, Sita had been transformed. Gone was the despairing sadness, now replaced with the excitement and anticipation of seeing Rama… seemingly endless wait, an impatient Sita digs up two rows of pits, seven in each. She yanks off her pearl necklace, the pearls drop into the pits and starts playing the solitary game of Sitadevi Ata!

Was the first ever board game an invention of a bored mind? We wonder! What may have begun as a simple race of counters, soon evolved into board games that encompassed the intricacies of hunting, of warfare, of coups and counter-coups and strategies unlimited... all on a board. Migrations of people, conquering armies, traveling guilds all contributed to the evolution of board games even as they incorporated regional elements. Men and women, young and old, even the gods and goddesses, kings and queens, heroes and damsels, witches and villains were not spared from the lure of board. Interestingly, an unwritten rule was that the Kings were never to turn down an invitation to either a battle or a game of dice! There are instances where kings have lost kingdoms, their beloved all in the throw of a dice. 

For instance, the legendary Nishadha of yore was ruled by the handsome king Nala and his wife Damayanti. The kingdom was prosperous and peaceful. Nala's scheming cousin Pushkara with an eye on usurping the throne challenges Nala to a game of dice. Nala loses the game and his kingdom. Banished to the forest, Nala undergoes many hardships and ends up in Ayodhya as Bahuka. As a servitor of king Rituparna, Nala gains his friendship. Rituparna a master of ‘Aksha Hridaya’, the art of rolling dice, teaches Nala (the painting on the cover of this brochure depicts this episode). Thus armed, Nala challenges Pushkara to another game of dice; wins back his kingdom. Happiness thus restored.

This legend from the multi-layered epic,  Mahabharata,  clearly shows that games of chance  are not merely for entertainment  but help forge the mental sinews to face the ‘slings and arrows’  of life!  Games either for two players or more hone the intellect as well as analytical skills, importance of team work, develop  leadership qualities, ’master’ opponents with foresight and forethought  and  strategy. Hence savants, the sages and the seers made ‘game’ playing  an integral part of teaching . Game patterns on the stone courtyards of temples, palaces and forts and even pilgrim shelters of yore are proof that games enjoyed wide popularity.

Game! What wrong did thou commit?

Devious men used thee to gamble.

Be it a race, wrestling bout or cricket,

‘Hit or miss’ itself is a gamble.

‘Kreedaa Kaushalya’ exhibition then is a festival celebrating the tradition of games. It is a mela of colour, incredible forms encompassing most variations of games dreamed up by man for his entertainment, for his enlightenment. ‘Kreedaa Kaushalya’ in its fifth edition is an exotic spread of board games that is a feast for your eyes and will entice the ‘gamer’ in you. Come, be a catalyst in this rejuvenation of our tradition.

International Recognition

A well known newspaper of UAE, The National, on 10 February 2013 carried an article titled Foundation meets demand for traditional Indian board games. We have been featured in it along with Kreeda Games of Chennai and Kavade of Bangalore. Following is an excerpt from the article.

When Raghu Dharmendra visits temples in remote corners of India, he peers at the floor. If necessary, he takes photographs.

Inevitably, somebody will ask him what he is doing. If he has found what he is looking for, Mr Dharmendra points to lines etched into the floor that make up the template for an old Indian board game.

In the olden days before cardboard and plastic, he explains, the floor would have formed the game board.

"And then people will get excited, and they'll talk about playing the game and tell us how it's played," said Mr Dharmendra, who designs board sets for traditional games for Ramsons Kala Prathishtana, a Mysore-based crafts foundation.

Mr Dharmendra's search in India's small towns and villages has yielded him the details of roughly 40 games, 21 of which his foundation has produced for sale. Every two years, he organises Kreeda Kaushalya, a tournament of traditional board games.

Across the country, a handful of individuals such as Mr Dharmendra are trying to revive interest in traditional Indian board games. Many of them are so ancient that they have travelled overseas and, in turn, inspired some of the West's most venerable games.

Pachisi, dating back to roughly the 6th century, gave rise to Ludo. Another game - called Gyan Chaupar in north India and Paramapadam Sopanam in the south - inspired Snakes & Ladders and may have even contributed key elements of The Game of Life, Milton Bradley's 1860 board game.

But board games in the India of today, competing as they do with computer games, television and the internet, are rapidly fading away.

Indeed, some are on the verge of extinction. Mr Dharmendra cites the example of Tablan, of which he has only ever seen two specimens.

"We don't even properly know the rules of this game yet," he said. "There's a rumour of one family living in north Karnataka that knows the rules well. But we haven't yet been able to go there to find them."

The Ramsons handicrafts showroom in Mysore is about 40 years old, but the foundation's efforts to support craft communities was started only in 1995. Its interest in board games began in 2000, spurred, according to Mr Dharmendra, by one question: "Why aren't we able to find the board games we played as children?"

To read the entire article, click here.

Traditional Games Jugalbandi

A group based in Mysore, Manvanthara Samooha Balaga along with Kanaka Sahitya Parishat organised a competition of traditional board games - Pagade, Chaukabara and Chaduranga at Vidyashankara Kalyana Mantapa near Gun House Circle in Mysore on the morning of Sunday, 20 January 2013. The event was aimed at popularising the traditional games like Chaduranga, Chowkabara, Pagade and Alagulimane that not only entertain but also are beneficial for mental agility. Many Mysoreans including men, women and children of all ages participated in this annual event.

Rules to Play Cows and Leopards

Cows & Leopards, called as Hasu Chirate Ata in Kannada, is a hunt game played by 2 players. One player gets 2 leopards while the other controls the herd of 24 cows.

Winner:
* Leopards win if they take out a minimum of 12 cows.
* Cows win if they immobilise both leopards.

How to play:
1. Both leopards and cows should be placed only on intersections of lines (shown by dots in Fig. 1)
2. During a turn only one coin has to be played.
3. At the beginning cows are placed at eight points as depicted by ‘C’ in Fig. 2.

4. One leopard is placed on any open point on the board such that it can attack a cow.
5. Next one cow is placed on any open point.
6. All cows are introduced one by one on the board one each during its turn. (i.e., one cow is placed on a point, next one leopard moves, next one more cow is placed on a point, next a leopard moves, next one more cow is placed on a point and so on).
7. All cows have to be introduced on the board before any cow starts moving.
8. If a leopard ‘L’ encounters a lone cow ‘C’ with a open point just behind it, then the leopard jumps over the cow to the open point and takes out the cow from the board as shown in Fig. 3 below.


9. Leopard can jump over multiple cows during its turn provided it should always land on an empty junction before jumping over the next cow (this is similar to multiple-cutting option as in Checkers). See Fig. 4.
10. Leopard cannot jump over a cow if there is no open point behind the cow as shown below in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6.



11. A cow that has been taken out of the board by a leopard is permanently out of the game and cannot be reintroduced on the board during that game.
12. After all cows are introduced on the board, cows start moving.

13. Only one cow can be moved to its adjacent open point during its turn.
14. Cows cannot jump over anything.
15. Leopards cannot jump over another leopard.
16. Cows should avoid getting jumped over by leopards and try to surround leopards such that leopards cannot move as shown below in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8.



17. Leopards try to take out as many cows as possible and avoid getting tied down by cows.
18. Cows try to tie down all leopards rendering them immobile.
19. Lines denote the path of movement. Cows and leopards should always move along the lines. Movement of a pawn between adjacent points is possible only when the points are connected by a line. See Fig.9 and Fig. 10 given below for wrong and correct movements.



20. Game ends when either leopard takes out more than 12 cows or cows manage to immobilise both leopards.

Benefits: This helps develop strategy and concept of team work by teaching that even though weak, if united, one can vanquish the stronger enemy, working as a team.

Mission Statement

Kreedaa Kaushalya is a passion project of our art foundation 'Ramsons Kala Pratishtana'. The main objective of this foundation is to promote craft forms. So, while working on this passion project, we have brought together two diverse traditions - Board Game Tradition and Craft Tradition.

We have identified about 35 craft clusters across India like Mysore, Bangalore, Channapatna, Sri Kalahasti, Solapur, Navalgund, Shantiniketan, Varanasi, Gurgaon, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Etikoppaka, etc. We have hand picked best-suited craftspersons for our work and extensively worked with them, first to understand their craft form completely so that we can speak with them in their own craft language (each craft form can be seen as a language and as languages differ from each other, so do craft forms) and later we provide them with our designs which were developed by designers of our art foundation.

Developing any product anew is a long drawn and time consuming process. Time consumed is directly proportional to remoteness of the craft cluster. After a considerable time a product is developed successfully. For every successful product created, there is one failure.

In spite of all these we do not want to go in for mass produced board games like those that are printed on paper or screen printing on cloth or canvas and plastic counters. Whatever product we develop, we ensure that it is a hand crafted one.