Before phones, we had the para. Every neighbourhood had its own rules, its own rhymes and its own arguments about who was out. Bengali traditional games are a big family. Wikipedia sorts them into chasing games, throwing games, hopscotch, board games, strategy games and more. Here's a tour of the ones most of us remember.
Chasing and tagging
- Kanamachi, the "blind fly": one player is blindfolded and tries to catch the others, much like blind man's buff. It's played all over Bangladesh, and in West Bengal, Assam, Odisha and Tripura too.
- Bouchi: one player is the "bride" and has to get back to her side without being tagged, while the other team can only chase her for as long as they can hold their breath.
- Borof Paani: the Bengali freeze tag. Get tagged and you freeze until a friend frees you.
- Kumir Danga, "crocodile and land": step off the land and the crocodile can catch you.
- Ha-du-du, or Kabaddi: two teams of seven, and a raider who tags the defenders and races home before they can tackle them. Kabaddi is Bangladesh's national game.
- Gollachut: the circle, the stick and the chain of hands. We named this whole site after it.
Hopping, throwing and spinning
- Ekka-dokka: hopscotch, played with a piece of broken clay pot, the guti, pushed through boxes drawn on the ground.
- Danguli, also called gulli danda: a short stick, the gulli, flicked up and struck with a longer one, the danda.
- Satchara, "seven stones": knock down a pile of seven stones with a ball, then rebuild it before the other team hits you with it. Wikipedia counts it among the oldest games of the subcontinent.
- Marbles and the lattu, the spinning top: pocket-sized treasures, traded, won and lost every afternoon.
A board, a die or a few chits
- Ludo, and on the other side of the same folding board, Snakes and Ladders. Ludo reached England as a boxed game in the 1890s, and snakes and ladders grew from older Indian dice games such as gyan chauper.
- Carrom, the favourite of clubs, courtyards and cousins.
- Raja-Mantri-Chor-Sipahi: four folded chits, four secret roles, and one player who has to find the thief. The points change from house to house.
- Sholo Guti, "sixteen pieces", and Bagh Chagol, the tiger and the goats, known to many of us as Bagh Bandi: strategy games scratched into the dirt or drawn on a board.
On the water and in the sky
- Nouka Baich: long boats racing on the rivers from June to October. Read about the boat races.
- Kite fighting: rooftops full of kites, never more than at Old Dhaka's Shakrain. Read about Shakrain.
Play them here
Many of these are already on Gollachut, with the rules from the para and the option to play your friends online: Ludo, Snakes and Ladders, Carrom, Chor Police, Sholo Guti, Bagh Bandi, Marbles, Lattu, Nouka Baich and Ghuri Kata.
Some, like Kanamachi and Kabaddi, belong in a real field with real friends. We hope this list sends you looking for both.
Which game did your para play that isn't here? Tell us.