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THE PEOPLE
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GAMES AND AMUSEMENTS
Among the educated classes in towns, particularly among undergraduates and schoolboys cricket and tennis and football are becoming increasingly popular. Organised wrestling competitions are held only in the monsoon, the main days being Naga-panchami, Janmashtami and Narali Paurnima. Bouts are also arranged at village fairs.
For the towns people occasional plays staged by travelling dramatic companies and the cinema theatres are the amusements, the latter having become quite a craze of late.
The extent of amusement for. the villager is very restricted. Village gossip which usually flourishes at the chavdi or the temple is further embellished at the weekly trip to the nearest market, an occasional visit to a fair or urus. Occasionally, a troupe of strolling acrobats, tamasgirs, garudis, nandivales and darveshis etc., visit a village and people are called to witness their demonstrations. They enjoy their entertainment fare. Village boys have their games such as Gilli Danda, Lonpat and Ardha Purdah. In Lonpat, the ground is marked out in squares to each of which a boy of the defending party is posted. Their opponents try to pass through these squares and back again without being touched. If they do so, they win the game. Ardha Purdah may be compared to Blind Man's Buff. Players form equal sides and a curtain is held up between them. One boy then hides close up to the curtain and the opposite party is asked to guess his name. If they reply correctly he is blindfolded and sent on some errand, the fun of the game consisting in watching him stumble over and knock his head against the various obstacles placed in his path. Girls have their dolls and play at house-keeping. Their amusements are naturally more indoors.
Of all the village festivals, the Pola which is perhaps the most typical in Buldhana deserves fuller description. It is a religious holiday held on the new-moon day of Shravana or Bhadrapada after the ploughing or sowing has been done by the cultivator in honour of his greatest helper the bullock. On that day, all the bullocks of the village are gaily painted in various colours and their horns and necks covered with garlands. They assemble in one place where stands the gudhi, a sacred ' Maypole' of the patel; the Mahars beating drums in front of it, and a twisted rope of mol grass covered with mango leaves being stretched from it to a smaller pole on the right. This rope is known as the toran and is dedicated to Maruti. Under this stands the patel's bullocks, which should be a pair without spot or blemish, all white or all red, according to the custom of the village. To the left of the pole, a long line is formed of the other bullocks those of the patel family first, then a pair chosen to represent the deshmukh, a pair to represent the Savkar, the Patvari's pair and finally those of the other villagers. All do puja to the pair of bullocks under the toran. At a given signal from the patel, his pair are laid forward, the toran is broken and the remaining pairs follow in order through the place where it has been. With this procession the ceremony ends, but no bullock can be put to work on this day. For once in the year, they are given a full holiday and are fed sweets.
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