Teaching in an Indian school is a nice experience in many respect, but I think what I liked the most was learning the games played by the Indian children. My favorite game is called Lagori. It is a traditional Indian game, very popular in Karnataka. Here are the rules from what I understood of it. The official ones might be slightly different. Two teams play against each other. There are usually 3 to 6 players in each team. One team is attacking and the other is defending. After one round, the roles are switched. Both girls and boys like to play Lagori, but they play separately (at least in Nittur School).

 

To play it, you need a ball, and a pile of stones forming a small tower. First, the tower is built in the middle of the gaming area. Then the attacking team takes the ball and throws it on the tower in order to make it fall. Once it fell, the defending team catches the ball and must throw it on one member of the attacking team. The aim for the attacking team is to rebuild the tower without being touched by the ball. If the tower is rebuild without attackers being touched, then the attacking team gets a point, otherwise the point goes to the defenders. Most of the time, the attacking team doesn’t succeed in rebuilding the tower in one row. So they need to escape after a few pallets, to attract the holder of the ball and make him throw again and to avoid getting hit. When the defending team is trying to get back the ball, the attacking team can rebuild the tower safely, singing “Lagori, Lagori, Lagori”.

 

Lagori is a quite complete game. It requires good aiming skills, both on fix targets and on moving ones. The fewer stones fall after the first throw, the fewer there will be to put back to rebuild the tower, so the first throw is really important. And throwing the ball on a child running 10 meters away is also very difficult. You also need good communication between the members of a team, because there are many players and only one ball, which is the only way for the defending team to protect the tower. Finally, you need to run a lot, especially in the attacking team where you need to distract the defenders while avoiding to get hit by the ball.

 

Lagori is very funny to watch. Kids are running everywhere, attackers are teasing the defenders so that they throw the ball at them, and they are hiding behind everything they find. After the attacking team started to rebuild the tower, or if only a few stones felt after the first throw, it is very common that one member of the defending team will make the tower fall when nobody is looking. And denying that he did anything after the other team realized someone cheated. This is also the charm of Lagori!

 

 

Guillaume AUDARD

FSL-India Volunteers from France