As a child, after that age, and even today, cricket remains my favourite game, to watch, play and comment upon.
But in the hills (Sundernagar, HP), cricket was a cumbersome game. Plastic or Cosco balls get lost in gorges, thick shrubs or other such inaccessible places. A leather ball might hit a stone or low earth and injure you badly.
Monkeys or Langurs swinging merrily above you might make a big branch fall, and the batsmen would have to worry about that plus the incoming delivery.
The best bet is to make ‘Piddu’ ball. It is made polythene, paper, rags and sock, stitched together tightly by sinewy arms, with a needle as big as the vet’s needle for buffaloes.
Piddu balls produce fantastic fast bowlers (ahem) because you have to hurl it at great speeds to make it reach the batsmen; you have to bend your back to make it bounce more than the waist height; and if on a 2nd innings the ball is reduced to its remnants (paper, polythene and rags) you have gather all your energy left and still make it do something. (Slower balls help in such cases)
Still, Piddu balls are difficult to produce (it’s actually a full manufacturing process) and easy to lose.
When we lost too many balls and when the older kids with sinewy arms strong enough to work with the buffalo needle were away, we used to play marbles (kanche).
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Marbles come in a near uniform size. For a child, their interiors are exciting to watch. They can be green, yellow and blue. The newer ones shine like Jem stones. The older ones lose their sheen, become rough, but are loved by the pro players.
Nilu, or dark blue marbles, are highly rated for their accuracy, for no reason whatsoever. The white ones, are just show-offs, and I owned quite a few of them.
I was never good at playing marbles, probably the worst player there ever was, but I owned the largest number of marbles in our colony. Actually I owned a full drawer of marbles, much to the envy of my brother Anuj or anyone who’d come home and check my prized haul.
When my paternal grandmother came to know of my fascination for marbles, she took me to a shop nearby (Dhariwal, Punjab) and bought me a hundred of them for Rs. 5.
I also got, surprise surprise, five of a special breed. These special kanchas were as big as 5-6 regular marbles placed together. I was happy. No one had them back home!
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My style of playing marbles was unusual and actually unethical. I wouldn’t bend my fingers to sling a marble. I’d actually move my full hand.
If the opponent’s kancha was 10 inches away, I’d move my hand at least 6 inches towards the marble and hit it from a 4 inch distance.
“Foul”, they’d cry. “I won’t play then”, I’d say. Since I had 80% of the colony’s marbles, my not playing really meant no cash flow for the whole system. They’d let me play. I was really the Wolf of the Kancha Street. I cheated but still remained incompetent.
My drawer full of marbles was a priced catch. I used to run my fingers through the collection every morning. I’d then exclaim to my brother in an Uncle Scrooge (of Disney hour fame) like manner “There’s one/two less. Give me my kancha back”, much to his chagrin.
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How did the drawer get full when I was an incompetent, unethical player?
Well, I used to rent out my kanchas to the pro bhaiyas. I’d give them 4-5 of my kanchas and tell the ‘pro’ that he could keep them all provided I kept all that he won. Through such deals, I used to receive 4-5 kanchas every day. My drawer got full.
For a few years we didn’t play marbles. Just like that. People took to soccer, badminton and cricket.
Then my home was to be white-washed. In the process, I lost my drawer-full of marbles. I cried for a day, with my mom checking every little place my collection could be. We couldn’t find them.
I returned to playing cricket.
Discoverage 