Learning from Play

As a child, I would close my eyes in the afternoon and pretend to sleep, waiting quietly for the moment when mother would fall asleep. Once she dozed off, I would very carefully unlatch the door and tiptoe out, then bound down the stairs two steps at a time straight toward the field! Because by the time mother woke up in the evening, half the game would already be over. What was the point of going then? It was impossible to ask mother’s permission to go out in the afternoon. She would never let me. She’d say, “Sleep now. You can go to the field in the evening after you wake up.”

Our house was on Ice Factory Road in Chittagong. Close by were the PTI School field, the Collegiate School field, and the Railway Colony field. Being quite the simpleton, I never had the courage to venture farther than these. Besides, I was afraid of getting beaten by mother. So many boys would play football and cricket there. I would go, try to join them, they would fight, and sometimes they’d hit me too. After getting beaten, I’d say, “I’m going to tell my mother everything.” Hearing this, they would roar with laughter. But if I actually told mother, she would give me another round of beating. “Why did you go there in the first place?”

Don’t think I was particularly good at sports. I don’t recall being able to play well at all. They would tell me, “If the ball falls in the drain or gets lost in the distant garbage heap, you’ll have to run and fetch it. Only then will we let you play.” That, apparently, was a fielder’s job. I would say, “But there are so many others! Tell them too!” They would snap back, “If you don’t fetch the ball, we won’t even let you bat.” But forget batting—they never once let me throw a single ball toward the batsman.

I would get very angry with them, but fear kept me silent. What if they beat me? What if they didn’t let me play? In anger, I would sometimes go play football with some other team. I looked quite pudgy and soft. Since I never fought, I never realized that I too had considerable strength in my body. If I wanted, I could have landed a few blows myself.

In football, they would make me goalkeeper. I couldn’t stop the ball properly; I would just get kicked and fall down with a thud. They would keep me at the goalpost and say, “Bappi, listen! You have to kick the ball with the side of your foot. If you kick with your toenails, they’ll come off!” I wouldn’t kick with the side; I would kick with my toenails. It felt like I got more power that way. It was only while goalkeeping that I realized I had a lot of strength in my body. Many would come in front of the goalpost and say, “Hey fatty, get out of the way! Or you’ll get beaten after the game!” I wouldn’t budge at all; instead, I would kick the ball with all my body’s strength. I understood later that those who actually hit don’t threaten to hit—they just hit you directly. My talent for kicking footballs ended right there.

There was another simple game called catch-catch. Two or four people would play together. We would throw a tennis ball and ask someone else to catch it. We would throw the catch as hard as possible, asking others to catch it. Sometimes I would throw the ball high up in the air with all my strength. The ball would go very, very high. When it came down, whoever could run and catch it first would win. This game was supposedly useful for cricket. To play cricket, you had to learn to “catch catches.” Alas, I spent my whole life learning to catch, but never managed to play cricket. Sometimes you have to learn by practicing. I only learned the grammar and never practiced; there’s rarely time for that, so the basics remain weak. I know a lot of good grammar, but I don’t know how to use it—then such knowledge has no value at all. People keep reading more and more grammar because it requires less effort; you don’t have to use your own brain; you can study riding on someone else’s intellect. This is one of the many clever ways to cheat.

The only mantra for studying: Sheer hard work!!

In the seven-stones game, seven pieces of cement/wood/clay (called ‘chara’) would be arranged in a row. With this arrangement in the center, two teams on either side would try to knock it down by throwing tennis balls. Once it was completely knocked down, that ball would then be thrown at the players’ bodies. Whoever got hit by the ball would be out! That’s how the game went, I think. There was another version called bomb-fight. Sometimes even real fights would break out there. I still remember how mercilessly everyone would throw the ball at each other’s bodies. It hurt terribly. During winter, to ease that pain, I would secretly massage myself with balm after returning home, hiding from mother. Of course, mother would somehow always find out. Another round of beating would follow. Mothers in childhood are terribly cruel. Life too is like seven-stones—whoever you can take advantage of, you hit them as hard as you please and derive whatever sick pleasure you can! No justice!

Marble playing was another favorite game of mine. From about a span’s distance, keeping your thumb in place, you’d use any of your other fingers to strike your opponent’s marble with your own. Very skilled players could do this from even greater distances. If you could hit the marble, you’d get another marble from them. Marbles came in all sorts of varieties. The price of marbles varied based on the decorative patterns inside them. We called marbles with intricate patterns “dazzling marbles.” (The word might have come from ‘dag’ meaning mark.) Winning marbles from opponents through your own skill was a matter of great prestige! Many would lose all their marbles and become ‘broke.’ Then you could play by borrowing. There was another game where everyone would contribute equal numbers of marbles, and holding them all together in one hand, you’d throw them at a fixed distance. If you could hit any of them with another marble, you’d get all the marbles at once! But if you hit more than one marble, you’d get nothing from that ‘offering.’ Though the task seemed easy, it wasn’t very simple for kids. You could also win marbles by digging a hole in the ground and then getting your marble into that hole through a special finger technique. In marble games, everyone’s target was to win as many marbles as possible from others into their own pocket. I see the same rule in adulthood too! Whoever can cleverly transfer money from someone else’s pocket into their own!

Learning to spin a top was also an extremely difficult matter. You’d wind a special kind of string completely around the top, then with an upward jerk of your fingers, throw the top onto the ground where it would start spinning. Through a special technique, you could take it between two fingers onto your palm. You’d have to tilt your hand this way and that to keep the top spinning upright. At first, the spinning nail of the top would tickle your palm terribly. Later it would gradually get better. Through a special technique, you could bring the top onto your palm even before the string unwound and it fell to the ground. The better you could control the top, the more beautifully it would spin in your palm. Life is like a top. The more beautifully you guide your life, the more beautifully life will guide you.

In childhood, I used to call badminton “cock-play.” Cock was short for shuttlecock. (Since I knew no other meaning of ‘cock’ besides rooster, I would casually say, “Come on, let’s play cock!” Hahahaha…) My principle was to hit the cock as far as possible with all my strength using the racket. I understood nothing about the game. I played purely with brute force. They often wouldn’t let me play. I would sit for hours hoping they might give me the racket for just five minutes! Life is the same. The less skilled you are, the longer you have to wait for opportunities.

I don’t remember the name of the game. Two people would sit facing each other on the ground. Then, stretching one leg forward, they would press their foot soles together from opposite directions so that all five toes of each foot would firmly touch each other. Then one person would stretch out the palm of either hand and place their little finger on top of the two joined big toes, while the other person would similarly place their little finger on top of their big toes and stretch out their palm vertically. This way, four palms arranged in sequence would create a wall. The rest would have to run from a distance and jump over that wall. If any part of someone’s body touched the wall, they would be out. The cheating in this game was that the two people sitting would sometimes raise their hands a little to get someone out. In life too, when crossing walls, I have to be careful that the wall itself doesn’t break me! The higher you can jump, the easier it is to overcome obstacles. Learning to rise high to overcome barriers is the main thing.

In arm wrestling, it’s not just about strength—I never understood this. I won the few times I won purely through brute force. Being the foolish type, whenever I had almost bent my opponent’s hand down, someone would tickle me to make me lose my grip, and I would lose. I could never even scold the person who didn’t let me win. From then on, it worked in my mind that I had to learn to win with my head, not my mouth. No one would remember how the game went; everyone would only remember this: Bappi lost! Life is like that too! As Nachiketa’s song goes: Why the headache over the path? Winning is what matters; if you lose, it’s shame, shame! It’s a game!

Another game of strength was tug-of-war. Two teams would grab either end of a rope and pull from opposite sides. There was a clever trick to winning this game: give your opponents a little slack—let the rope drift toward their side—and just when they think they’re winning and become a bit careless, give one sharp tug to yank the rope back to your side. This was a wonderfully crafty technique. You had to convince your rivals that you were probably losing, that you couldn’t manage anymore, that you were giving up. Then they’d think of you as an easy target and ease up on their own effort. That was precisely when you’d give them a moment’s respite before delivering the decisive blow with all your strength. In any struggle, merely displaying your own power isn’t the final word—you have to arrange things so your opponent thinks they’ll win even if they stop showing their strength for a while.

We played kabaddi. Two teams would divide on either side of a line. One person from a team would hold their breath and chant “Kabaddi-kabaddi-kabaddi… kabaddi lakshan, tore dhorte kotokhon…” while advancing toward the other team, trying to touch someone and return to their own side still holding their breath. If they managed this properly, whoever they touched would be out. But if they let out their breath beforehand, or if the opponents caught and held them back, they’d be out instead. Once you crossed back to your own territory with breath held, there was no more danger. If you take a breath peacefully before finishing the task, many tasks simply don’t get done. Some things must be accomplished in one go!

In danguli, we’d use a larger stick to strike a very small piece of tree branch and send it flying far away. You could hit it multiple times if needed. This was the childhood version of golf, only with a small dead twig instead of a ball. Often in this game the little stick would go flying and hit the young players in various parts of their bodies. This was the game most likely to earn you a beating from your mother. Life is like danguli too—whoever can strike it harder can send it farther! Without delivering powerful blows, it’s impossible to make life go anywhere.

We also played some games indoors. Like blind man’s bluff. One person’s eyes would be tied with cloth or a towel—they were the blind man. Their job was to grope around and catch any of us. Whoever got caught became the next blind man. Everyone would chant, “Blind man buzz buzz, whoever you catch, you touch!” Many would slap the blind man on the cheek, head, or back. Then if you could cleverly touch them in return, they’d become the next blind man. When we’re helpless in life, everyone just strikes us. We have to turn around in such a way that it renders the very person striking us helpless instead. There were some tricks to tying the cloth or towel too. If you applied some cunning while tying it, you could loosen the binding by moving your eyes up and down, and catch glimpses here and there. When we saw this, we’d all scream together: “He’s cheating! He’s cheating!! That’s not allowed! Not allowed! We won’t play!!”

Another game I absolutely loved was pen fighting. You’d strike your pen with a special technique, hitting your opponent’s pen hard enough to knock it off the table. At home or in class, I ruined countless good pens playing this game—there’s no accounting for it. Playing with a thick, heavy pen gave you an advantage because other pens couldn’t knock it down. How many times I didn’t speak to friends for two or three days after losing at pen fighting! As long as I didn’t understand that a pen’s real strength comes from the mind, I kept playing this game.

Hide and seek was quite an enjoyable game. One person would be “it.” They’d sit in one place with eyes closed while everyone else scattered to hide. There was no telling who would hide where. Many would hide in very difficult places indeed. Whoever was hiding would think they’d never be found again. They’d call out from their hiding spots: “Ready!!” The seeker’s job was to find anyone from their hiding place. Whoever got caught became the next seeker. There was subtle cheating in this game. Some would give others away. Even for hiding, this world isn’t fair! There’s no peace in this world, even in hiding!

I loved playing ludo. Especially snakes and ladders. There’s another ludo game where you have to reach a specific destination, and opponents can cut your piece before you get there. That requires some strategy. But snakes and ladders needs no strategy at all. Luck takes you wherever it wants, and you simply go that way. Getting a high number on the dice isn’t necessarily good, and getting low isn’t necessarily bad. There’s no way to know beforehand what’s best. You might get just a 1 and climb a ladder to leap ahead twenty-seven spaces for free, or you might roll the highest—17—and still slide down twenty-seven spaces into a snake’s belly. In life too, we can never tell beforehand where the ladder is or where the snake lies waiting to devour us. Big job, big salary, big suffering—that’s no life at all! Having less can often mean much more! You can never know! Many people’s lives become unbearable from the complications of getting too much. Better to live well with a little less than such gains! Both types of ludo offer opportunities for cheating. With subtle finger play, you can turn the ludo piece and change the dice number. But whatever number comes up, even if it’s very high, can sometimes prove self-destructive for you. Then again, even that cheating might hold hidden benefits. Life is like that too. Doing an unfair thing is not wrong. Doing an unfair thing and getting caught is wrong.

I played cards. I only knew two types of games. After shuffling the cards and dealing them equally to everyone, we’d flip them one by one without looking and place them face-down. Whoever’s card matched the suit of the previous person’s card would take all the cards. I don’t remember what this was called. This was the simplest, most childish card game. The other game was call bridge. You had to judge the weight of your cards and declare beforehand how many points you thought you’d get at minimum. If you got fewer than that, a minus sign would appear before that number. The game would continue this way. Some people would sit there having lost all dignity, deep in negative points. Life’s game is the same way. The better your foresight, the further ahead you get. If you can’t do the right thing at the right time, your whole life will be nothing but minuses. Alas! In life’s negatives upon negatives, there’s never a plus.

My cousin taught me to play chess. The day I first learned this game, I was so excited I thought this must be the world’s greatest game! I played with him for hours and hours that day, losing every time. After playing like this for two days, on the third day I beat him. What joy I felt that day! Having defeated the master, I felt as if I’d conquered the world! From then on, I began to think I’d learned the game. Only when you win do you want to believe you can play too! Now if I wanted, I could beat anyone! For the first time in my life, I felt I would play only to win. I knew that if I played, I would win. The first victory is absolutely crucial for all the victories that follow. From that day forward, I became deeply absorbed in chess. Whenever I saw someone who could play chess, I’d beg them earnestly to play with me. I’d lose, learn why I’d lost, then play again, and eventually I’d win too. Playing to win, or winning to play? That’s a big question! To win, you must play. But I think to play, you must also win. If you never win, you don’t want to play anymore!

When I was studying at Chittagong College for HSC, one of the reasons many people knew me was that I could play carrom well. I’d skip class and stand for hours and hours in the common room playing carrom. I’d learned this game much earlier. I could play two types. One was “kola gach” (banana tree). The black and white pieces would be arranged alternately with the most honored red piece in the center, forming a tree pattern. Then through the magic of the striker, whoever could “eat” the most pieces. White pieces were worth 10 points, black ones 5, and red 50. If you pocketed the red, you had to “cover” it—meaning after sinking the red piece, you had to sink another piece to make eating the red “legitimate.” Among up to four players, whoever had the lowest total points would put pieces worth that many points back on the board to start playing again. Playing like this, whoever went bust first would be out. The other game was board play. One team would play with white pieces, another with black. The red was worth 5 points, the others 1 each. In carrom, the technique of holding the striker, the skill of flicking it with your fingers, whether it’s better to aim directly at a piece or target one piece through another, or whether you should shoot the striker at some spot on the board to hit a piece indirectly so it goes into the pocket easily—you have to understand all this. Life is like that too. Here, just running isn’t the main thing—understanding how we’re running is equally important. Just kept running and running, didn’t get anything at all—that’s mostly life’s story!

Another game we used to play was
Business Game—essentially a dice game.
This was primarily an Indian game. On a huge board shaped like a Ludo board, you had to conceal two pieces in your palms, shuffle them between your hands, and then scatter them. After that came various business-related activities—buying and selling property, establishing settlements, shipping goods by transport, purchasing houses, and countless other decisions that had to be made with speed, foresight, and shrewdness. The slightest misstep in judgment would cost you a massive financial penalty. Playing this game, I came to understand that those who run businesses, who forge their own destinies, who create employment for others—they are anything but ordinary people. Not everyone has the ability or courage to gamble with life like that. Those who can do it are surely different from everyone else! I had decided in my heart that I too would forge my own destiny! Later, I did start a business and even made considerable progress, but I tucked my tail and ran before seeing it through!

What other games did we play in childhood? Cops and robbers, name-place-animal-thing, song battles, phultokka, tic-tac-toe, kutkut, and so many other colorful names! I can’t even remember them all. I played so many wonderful games without even knowing their names! Who knows if some of them even had names at all! After I reached high school, I never participated in any outdoor games again. Once, when I was in class nine, all the boys in my class convinced me with great difficulty to play a little cricket with them after school. When I initially said, “I won’t play. I can’t play,” they said, “You don’t have to play, just stand there. If we mention you were there, sir won’t beat us.” Finally, I agreed to their persistent requests. On the field, I just stood and watched what they were doing. Nothing more. Since I was the first boy in class, they didn’t even make me fetch the ball. The next day in class, our class teacher Sunil Sir called all of us who had played after school and gave everyone except me a terrible beating. One boy had a belt buckle with a fierce-looking dragon on it. So his beating was double. Then one boy, unable to contain his anger any longer, dared to say, “Sir, Sushanta was with us too.” Then Sir said, “You fool, Sushanta plays cricket and still comes first in exams. But you all fail. If Sushanta plays, he’ll play—but what logic do you have for playing? Even if he comes to class now wearing a belt with dragons, Dracula, or ghosts on it, I won’t say anything to him. Because he knows all his lessons. You know nothing, so whatever you do is wrong. Those who don’t study—everything they do is wrong. Those whose fundamentals aren’t right—nothing about them is right.” Those words from Sir got deeply embedded in my mind from that tender age. Throughout my life, I’ve tried to apply the lesson I learned from Sir. Thank you, Sir.

The same shirt
looks good on one person
but not on another. At least
that’s what people say. Why does this happen? Because the first person is very handsome? Or because that shirt and that person are Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi—Made for each other? It doesn’t always have to be like that. More often, it’s simply that the first person has greater acceptability. The second person might feel angry or hurt about this, but thinking with a cool head, you’ll understand that a shirt looks good not because of the shirt’s qualities, but because of the person’s qualities. Everyone calls the shirt wonderful because the person wearing it is wonderful. So to wear beautiful clothes, you first have to become a beautiful person. Otherwise, no matter what you wear, you won’t find anyone to say “that suits you.” Even the flashy displays of successful people look appealing, while the honest words of failures sound irritating. Everyone tells them, “You don’t have two pennies to your name, just big talk!” Life is like that. Nothing to be done! Success is the sweetest excuse!

Not everyone in this world can do everything. Not everyone gets everything in life. Not everything can be accomplished by everyone. There’s no reason to stay depressed about this. An elephant’s inability to climb trees doesn’t make it inferior to a monkey. You have to see how someone performs in the work they do well. In cricket, I was the player who fetched balls from the drain. Those who wouldn’t take me in their games because I couldn’t play, who didn’t give me the time of day, who found peace in mocking me—they actually played quite well. They devoted a lot of time to cricket; through many sacrifices, they had become good players. I couldn’t play cricket, so even if they had included me in the game just to fetch balls from the drain, I would have felt peaceful thinking “I’m playing too.” In exchange for retrieving balls from drains, I got something else—I scored 38 points more than them in math exams. They got 60, I got 98. I wouldn’t have minded that either if they had grown up to become Sakib Al Hasans. If they could have achieved something like that, the whole world would have respected them. But that didn’t happen! So what did they gain in life by abandoning studies to play cricket? Cricket is fine, if studies remain completely intact. Otherwise, you’ll spend your whole life applauding cricket, and there’ll be no applause for your own achievements. Those who used to beat me in childhood had all their strength in their bodies, their heads were empty. I haven’t seen much friendship between physical strength and mental strength myself. Those with less capacity for thinking—God, in His mercy, gives them some power in their arms and mouth.

It’s best to devote your time to pursuing whatever you dream of becoming. Do what you love. Love what you do.