L22: Folk Games of Goa (2)

Good morning, class! Welcome back. Last lecture — our first in Unit III — we opened the topic of folk games of Goa. We covered outdoor physical games like Gilli-Danda and Lagori, water games, board games, the domestic play traditions like Bhatukali, and festival games. Today we continue with Lecture 22: Folk Games of Goa — Part Two. [INTRODUCTION — 0 to 10 minutes] I want to begin today with a question that came up in several of your assignment submissions on game documentation: one of you asked, "Is a folk game still a folk game if it is organised by a school or a cultural festival committee and given prizes and rules?" This is a genuinely interesting question. Let me address it. There is a concept in folkloristics — the study of folk culture — called the folklorisation of folk culture. This is the process by which a living practice that used to happen organically in a community context is taken up by institutions — schools, government, cultural organisations — and presented as a formal programme. A Fugdi that women dance spontaneously at Ganesh Chaturthi is folk culture. A Fugdi competition at the Kala Academy with judges, scoring criteria, and prizes is something different — it is folk culture that has been folklorised. Is folklorisation bad? Not necessarily. It can preserve the form when the organic context has weakened. It can give practitioners recognition and economic incentive. It can introduce the form to new audiences — including school children who would not otherwise encounter it. But it also changes the form — it selects for certain characteristics, usually the visually spectacular, the most easily judged, the safest and most school-appropriate version. The rough edges, the social complexity, the occasion-specific meaning — these get polished away. This tension between organic folk practice and institutional preservation is the central challenge of intangible cultural heritage management. Keep it in mind as we discuss folk games today. [CORE CONTENT — 10 to 40 minutes] Let me pick up where we left off and go deeper into some specific game traditions. Atya Patya — a traditional Goan and Maharashtrian team game — involves two teams on a grid. The attacking team tries to run across the grid touching opponents, while the defending team tries to intercept and tag them out. The game requires speed, agility, deception, and coordination. It is played outdoors on a dirt or grass field and requires only a drawn grid — no equipment. Atya Patya has been revived in some Goan schools as part of folk games education programmes, and it is played at Shigmo festival competitions in some talukas. It is physically demanding and genuinely exciting to watch. Kabbadi — while national and well known across India — has a distinctly Goan variant called Hu-Tu-Tu in some communities. The Goan version of this breath-holding tag game has specific local rules about team composition and scoring that differ from the standardised national Kabaddi rules. These local variants are precisely what gets lost when a folk game is nationalised and standardised. The national championship version of Kabaddi and the village version played in a Goan field are not the same game. Khokho — the team game where a stationary chain of sitting players tries to catch running opponents — was played extensively in Goan school grounds. It requires very specific skills: the sitting player must pass the turn quickly to the sitting teammate most advantageously positioned to catch the runner. The running player must exploit gaps and confuse direction. Khokho is a genuinely sophisticated game of spatial strategy dressed in the clothing of a simple children's game. Let me now discuss games specifically tied to the Goan coastal and river environment. These are games that exist nowhere else because they require Goa's specific geography. Boat racing on the rivers — not motorboat racing, but traditional rowing boat racing — was a major community event in riverine Goa. Villages along the Mandovi, Zuari, and Sal competed in boat races during festivals. The boats were traditional wooden fishing vessels — the Canoe and the Machwa — and the crews were typically men from fishing families. The race course was a stretch of river, the festival audience lined the banks, and the competing village boats wore different colours. These river races were simultaneously athletic competition, community solidarity events, and displays of boating skill. Some of these races still survive — notably around the Feast of Our Lady of Health at Velha Goa and at certain Shigmo gatherings along the Mandovi. Beach games associated with the fishing community include various ball games played on the hard sand at low tide — using a rattan ball called a Phadera in some coastal villages — and the elaborate sand-craft competitions during Holi and Shigmo in which children and adults compete to make the most elaborate sand sculptures. The knowledge of wet sand construction — which sand packs best, how to build overhangs, how to create stability — is transmitted through these competitions from experienced hands to young ones. Evening games of the village courtyard — played after agricultural work and in the long cool evenings of the dry season — form their own category. These include Sakhali — a form of tag in which the person who is "it" tries to form an unbroken chain of captured players who then help catch others. This game can grow to involve an entire village's children. It requires no equipment, has simple rules, and is endlessly scalable. The sound of Sakhali being played in a village evening — the shouting, the running, the chain forming and breaking — is one of the sonic textures of traditional Goan village life. Number and counting games, played by children sitting in circles, often tied to Konkani number songs and rhymes, are a game category that bleeds directly into language transmission. The Konkani rhymes used in these games — the equivalent of "eeny-meeny-miney-moe" in English — are oral literature. They preserve vocabulary, they teach prosody, they transmit cultural references. A Konkani counting rhyme that mentions the names of local fruits, birds, or occupations is a poem about Goa, memorised by every child who plays the game. Let me also address the gender dimensions of folk games. Goan folk games were often strongly gender-segregated. Boys played in fields, girls played in courtyards. Boys played games of speed and strength — Gilli-Danda, Lagori, Atya Patya. Girls played games of coordination, social complexity, and domestic apprenticeship — Fugdi, Bhatukali, ring games with songs. This segregation reflected the broader gender structure of traditional Goan society. As gender roles change — as girls play cricket and boys learn to cook — the gendered game categories are shifting. This is largely a healthy change, but it does mean that some games that were specifically girl-games are losing their custodians, because the boys who now share the courtyard were never taught these games. The folk games revival movement in Goa deserves specific mention. Several civil society organisations — Goa Heritage Action Group, the Goa Konkani Akademi, and various school networks — have made deliberate efforts to document and revive folk games. Annual folk games competitions are held in some talukas, where children compete in Gilli-Danda, Lagori, and other traditional games. The state government has included folk games education in the school physical education curriculum at certain levels. These are important interventions. However, revival programmes face structural challenges. Folk games require open outdoor space — a commodity that is increasingly scarce in Goa's rapidly urbanising landscape. A Lagori game needs a flat open area of at least 400 square metres. Many urban schools in Panaji and Margao simply do not have this space. The game that was born in a paddy field cannot easily be relocated to a concrete courtyard. [ACTIVITY AND DISCUSSION — 40 to 55 minutes] Today's activity is a game design exercise. I want you, in groups of four, to spend eight minutes designing a folk-game revival programme for your college or neighbourhood. You have to answer: Which game will you revive? What space will you use? Who will teach it? How will you make it appealing to young people without destroying what makes it folk? What will success look like? Take eight minutes, then two groups will present. [pause and presentation] Very interesting. Group one proposes a Gilli-Danda tournament in the college grounds with elimination brackets — essentially folklorising the game. Group two proposes informal pick-up Lagori sessions organised through WhatsApp with no formal structure, keeping it closer to organic folk practice. These are two valid models with different tradeoffs. Discussion Question 1: Group two's model — keeping it informal and organic — is more authentic, but it depends on the enthusiasm of a few individuals and may fade when those individuals leave. Group one's model — formalised competition — is more sustainable institutionally, but changes the game's social character. Which would you choose, and why? Discussion Question 2: Folk games were created and played without smartphones. If we allow phones at a folk games event — people photographing, streaming — does that undermine the authenticity of the experience? Or should we welcome documentation? [SUMMARY AND ASSIGNMENT — 55 to 60 minutes] Today we extended our survey of Goan folk games into team games — Atya Patya, Khokho — and into the geographically specific games of river and coastal communities. We discussed the gendered dimensions of folk games and what changes as gender norms evolve. We looked at the folk games revival movement and its structural challenges around urban space. And we discussed the tension between folklorisation and authentic folk practice. Assignment: Go out and teach a younger sibling, cousin, or child in your neighbourhood one traditional Goan game you researched last week. Then write a one-page reflection: how did the child respond? What was challenging to explain? What did the child enjoy? This experience of transmission is itself part of your learning. Next lecture — Lecture 23 — we begin the trades and occupations section of Unit III with Fishing and Agriculture — the two most fundamental economic activities of traditional Goa, their techniques, their communities, their ecological knowledge, and their heritage significance. See you Thursday!