The boy on left is about to strike the gilli with the danda, while the one on right is fielding.

Gilli-Danda (Devanagari: गिल्ली डण्डा, Tamil: கிட்டி-புல், Urdu: گلی ڈنڈا) is an amateur sport played in the rural areas and small towns all over India and Pakistan especially in Tamil Nadu, Punjab, as well as Cambodia.

Gilli Danda known by various other names: it is called Tipcat in English, Dandi-Biyo (डण्डी बियो) in Nepali, alak-doulak (الک دولک) in Persian, dānggűli in Bengali & Assamese, chinni-dandu in Kannada, kuttiyum kolum in Malayalam, viti-dandu विट्टी दांडू in Marathi, kitti-pul (கிட்டி-புல்) in Tamil, Gooti-Billa or Karra-Billa or Billam-Godu in Telugu, Gulli-Danda in Punjabi, Geeti Danna (گیٹی ڈنا) in (Saraiki, Iti-Dakar (اٽي ڏڪر) in Sindhi, Lappa-Duggi (لپا ڈگی ) in Pashto and Kon ko in khmer, the Cambodian language.

Origin[link]

"Gilli Danda" origins in India date back to the "Maurya Dynasty" or even before that. This game is an extremely famous local game played all over the sub continent and even in South Asia. Gilli Danda is also believed to be the origin of many such European and American games like Cricket, Baseball & Softball. This is due to the uncanny similarities of this game to the current version of Cricket or Baseball.

Origin of Cricket: It is believed that Europeans or travelers from South East Asia who travelled Hindustan during or before the Maurya age could have been inspired by the game and would have extended the format to Cricket when back home. Also remember that Maurya Dynasty is the same age wherein Alexander the Great tried to establish his supremacy in India but faced a bitter defeat and retreated back. During this age it was also believed that foreigners from far away lands came to India for business and cultural learning. Due to the continuous inflow of such foreigners into Hindustan, it is also suspected that some brought back the format of 'Gilli Danda' to England - or it somehow reached England and was then evolved into Cricket. - So while it is believed that Cricket is the national game of England or its origins were from England- it also indicates that the origins might have been the subcontinent (India) for someone to be inspired and extend the rules of the game to build into what we today known as "Cricket".

Origin of Baseball: Baseball was invented in America and was inspired from Cricket in many ways. This can be claimed as America was very well an English colony before the Americans fought for their Independence. It is believed that Americans post their Independence wanted to continue with the English life style while not have to replicate anything what the English left behind. Thus Cricket was evolved into Baseball. America has always been to have been opposite to the English lifestyle- Right Hand Drive Roads, Lifts which have the Ground Floor button on the Top and the Top Floor button at the bottom - English which has a different accent and dialects/ pronunciations, etc.

Equipment[link]

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it.

Rules[link]

"Gilli Danda" is played with 2 pieces of equipment- "Gilli" meaning a small Oval shaped wooden structure. This is believed to have evolved into the Cork, Season ball or Softball for Cricket and Baseball. In this game a player balances the Gilli on a stone in an inclined manner (somewhat like a See-Saw) with one end of the Gilli rested or touching the ground while the other end is in the air. Player uses the second part of the equipment called "Danda" which in English is the stick- this is believed to have been evolved in to the Cricket or Baseball Bat. With the Danda, the player hits the Gilli at the end which is in the air- to flip it in the air and then strike the Gilli as far as possible. The player is made to stand in a small circle with the Danda and the Gilli. The objective is to strike the Gilli while in mid air as far as possible. The player is required to run and touch a particular section as decided until the Gilli is retrieved back.- This particular format is believed to have later evolved into Runs/ Home Runs.

Scoring and outs[link]

There are many regional variations to scoring.

The gilli becomes airborne after it is struck. If a fielder from the opposing team catches the gilli, the striker is out. If the gilli lands on the ground, the fielder closest to the gilli has one chance to hit the danda (which has to be placed on top of the hole used) with a throw (similar to a run out in cricket). If the fielder is successful, the striker is out; if not, the striker scores one score and gets another opportunity to strike. The team (or individual) with the most points wins the game. If the striker fails to hit gilli in three tries, the striker is out (similar to a strikeout in baseball).While the Gilli has been struck the opponent player/players need to retrieve the Gilli back to the Circle or in best case catch the Gilli in mid air without it hitting the ground- this was believed to have later evolved into a Catch Out in Cricket and Baseball.

Teams[link]

There is no official maximum number of players or teams. Gilli-danda can be played where each individual plays for themselves, or between two teams.

Variations[link]

As an amateur youth sport, gilli-danda has many variations. A common variation is where the striker is allowed to hit the gilli twice, once initially, and then while the gilli is in the air.

In some versions, the points a striker scores is dependent on the distance the gilli falls from the striking point. The distance is measured in terms of the length of the danda, or in some cases the length of the gilli. Scoring also depends on how many times the gilli was hit in the air in one strike. If it travels a certain distance with two mid-air strikes, the total point is doubled.

In Nepal, Dandi biyo is played in similar fashion.

Similar games[link]

• In the Philippines, a game known as syatong is similar to gilli-danda.
• In Italy a similar game known as "Lippa", "Lipe", "Tirolo", or "S-cianco" is shown in the movie Watch Out We Are Mad.^[1][2][3]
• In the United States, a similar game is called pee-wee.^[4]

In popular culture[link]

The Bollywood movie Lagaan mentions the traditional sport of gilli-danda as similar to cricket.

Premchand, the famous Hindi literary figure, wrote a short story named "Gilli-danda" in which he compares old simple times and emotions to modern values and also hints at caste inequalities in India.^[5]

See also[link]

• Backyard Cricket

References[link]

External links[link]

• How to Play Gilli-Danda
• Gilli-Danda Guidelines
• Watch Gilli-danda being played
• Watch a Gilli-danda tournament
• Lippa (Italian)
• S-cianco (Italian)

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Tagged since July 2010. It may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Tagged since January 2008. Its tone or style may not reflect the formal tone used on Wikipedia. Tagged since April 2008.

Ramesh Mehta, (born 7 August 1923) is an Indian playwright, director, actor and translator. He was the uncrowned king of Delhi Theatre in the 1950s and 1960s.

Biography[link]

Mehta was born in Jhang Maghiyana, the only son of Pyare Lal, an employee of the Jammu and Kashmir Government, and Durga Devi, a housewife. He had his early education in Srinagar and Jammu. He graduated from Dayal Singh College, Lahore, after his father’s death. As per the interview held with him by Anil Goel,^[1] Ramesh Mehta’s interest in theatre started during his college days in Lahore, where he used to see the Coronthian Theatre’s Parsi plays regularly. He moved to Delhi in 1942 in search of a job after his graduation.

Mehta joined Three Arts Club in 1947 or 1948. His actual name was Rameshwar Nath Mehta, but he was re-christened as Ramesh Mehta by his first theatre director, Shibu Ghoshal, when he joined the Three Arts Club. Three Arts Club was a theatre group of the government employees of Delhi. In pre-partition days, Government of India used to shift its offices from Delhi to Simla in summer months. Thus, though the Three Arts Club was established in 1943 and was registered in Shimla, yet it functioned from Delhi and Simla, both. After independence, it started performing in Delhi, as the practice of moving the capital to Shimla was abandoned. Ghoshal first entrusted Ramesh, or ‘Romesh’, as he used to call him, with the job of prompting. ‘Romesh’ not only performed the job of prompting with perfection, but also suggested some new dialogues for the play, which improved the performance. This showed the genius in Ramesh at the very beginning itself and impressed all the members of the group.

Having noted that Mehta had an immense passion for theatre, Shibu Ghoshal next gave him a chance to act in a small role. He excelled and everyone looked at him as a great potential actor. In 1949, Shibu Ghoshal wanted to stage an original contemporary play on the prevailing condition of India after independence. Mehta penned the first play of his life, India Today, which was a picture of the India of those days, and ran for four days in the Messey Hall of Delhi. Next year, he wrote a new play, Dahej. These two plays of Ramesh Mehta are not available today, as these were not published.

In 1950 itself, Ramesh wrote his third play, Dasturi, which was published with the title of Damad (Son-in-Law). It had six successful shows. Slowly, Mehta was becoming the in-house writer of the Three Arts Club, where he was to write ten more full-length plays, around a dozen one-act plays, translate/adapt a number of plays from the Indian languages like Telugu (N.R. Nandi’s Maro Mohanjodaro), Bengali (Shambhu Mitra’s Kanchanranga), Gujrati (Bakul Tripathi’s Leela), Marathi (Mama Warerkar and Vasant Kanetkar’s plays) etc., and also Inspector General, the Russian play written by Gogol, and direct more than a dozen plays. He is one of the very few stalwarts of the Hindi theatre who have performed the three roles of writer, director and the actor together.

He was very ably supported by Rajendra Mohan Kaul, better known as R.M. Kaul or better, Raja Bhai, who ran the administration of the Club as General Secretary during almost the total life of the Club. They found the third pillar of strength in Shri M.N. Kapur, the then principal of the Modern School, Barakhamba Road, who became the president of the Club in 1956 and remained in that position for more than two decades.

A theatre repertory needs a visionary President, a dynamic and competent General Secretary and an actor-cum-artistic director–all the three having exclusive but coordinated responsibilities. The growth and success of the Three Arts Club for over thirty-five years is a living illustration of it.

Some of Ramesh Mehta’s plays like Under Secretary, Dhai Akar Prem Ka,Dhong, Hamara Gaon, Faisla etc. have become milestones of the modern Hindi theatre. His farce Under Secretary has broken all records of popularity. It has been such a great attraction that it has been translated in many India languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Sindhi, Bengali, Gujrati etc.^[2] This play is being performed even today in Hindi as well as in other languages in many cities of India and abroad. Ramesh Mehta has written and performed three plays for the children based on [Panchtantra].

The greatness of Mehta lies not in the number of the plays he wrote, directed or acted in, but in the contribution he made, through the Three Arts Club, in promoting the culture of drama and inculcating the habit of theatre-going in the common man of Delhi city, which had seen mainly Parsi theatre or Nautanki till independence. Modern theatre was mostly confined to colleges. Or, it was Prithviraj Kapoor who used to bring his troupe, [Prithvi Theatre] to Delhi to perform their plays.

In fact, Ramesh Mehta can be called as the main link between the Parsi and the modern Hindi theatre. This is evident from the fact that, while on the one hand, his first play India Today had songs and dance-sequences like any Parsi play, on the other hand, many of his plays were adopted and adapted by the Parsi theatre companies of Delhi and other northern states, and thousands of shows of his plays have been performed by those. (It is learnt that his plays are being performed by travelling companies even today in remote areas of Bihar etc.).

Ramesh Mehta not only wrote, directed and acted in the plays, but he also helped in forming the theatrical clubs in many governmental departments and ministries of the government of India like Central Secretariet, Home Ministry etc. The Three Arts Club performed numerous times for the Western Command Theatrical Society of the Indian Armed Forces. Theatrical groups were established in many industrial houses and establishments in Delhi, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh etc. with his active support and guidance. He had become like an institution in himself. His play Hamara Gaon was performed in Teen Murty House on 13 November 1954, where Pt. Jawahar Lal Nehru himself was present along with his cabinet members and other Indian and foreign dignitaries. President Dr. Rajendra Prasad, President Dr. Zakir Hussain, Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru, Chief Minister (Later Prime Minister) Ch. Charan Singh and many other dignitaries used to come to see his plays quite often. Film-stars Prithviraj Kapoor and many more of them, like Moti Lal, Shobhna Samarth, I.S. Johar, Sunder etc.also used to watch his plays in Delhi and Simla’s legendary Gaiety Theatre. In fact, Sunder did many of Ramesh Mehta’s plays in Bombay (now Mumbai).

He is also credited with writing the farce play Uljhan, the first Hindi play staged by the Indian Armed Forces. This play was written by him at the desire of Field Marshal K.M. Cariappa., who wanted that the Indian Armed Forces should also do plays in Hindi, the national language, after having attained independence.

Even at Defence Services Staff College,Wellington(Nilgris);in 1975 the spirit of giving equal importance to Hindi & English under FM SAM Manekshaw,at Coonoor was carried forward by Lt. Gen A N Sethna,then Commandant of Staff College.Two play's were staged-Ramesh Mehta's 'Dhai Akhar Prem Ka'a Hindi comedy and 'See How They Run'an English comedy.Despite the language difference it put the audience comprising of differing nationalities in to splits of laughter-the audience comprised of students and their families from 14 different countries!

To perform two plays with just a day's difference requiring herculean effort to change stage settings in just 8 hours. Ramesh Mehta's disciple from Modern School Day's Sham Narain did the feat.He was then a student at Staff College.Along with whole cast of English & Hindi Plays he too was awarded for Decor special Mementos from 'Poompahar' Tamil Nadu Statecraft were awarded by Defence Minister S. Swaran Singh.

Ramesh's excellence in satire play writing was such a great hit that-his 'Dhai Akhar Prem Ka' was again Staged by Army in 1982 at, Gaiety Theater, Shimla.At that time Gen K Sunderji,was Army Commander Western Command.Here Sham Narain acted as 'Mamaji'.

His plays were performed not only in India, but in many other countries like Kenya, Canada, Pakistan etc. All India Radio requested Ramesh to stage his play ‘Hamara Gaon’ in their open premises and relayed it simultaneously from all of its transmitters. Similarly, when Doordarshan started, it befittingly requested Ramesh Mehta to stage his play ‘Dhong’ in Pragati Maidan’s exhibition grounds in New Delhi and telecast it live on the Television sets installed on all sides.

The Three Arts Club organised the first big theatre-festival in 1956,^[3] and followed it with several functions till the early eighties. They are also credited with organising the first Children’s theatre festival in Delhi in 1961, where adults performed in the children’s plays. The biggest achievement of the Three Arts Club was that they were able to make their Club financially self-sufficient, without ever having to depend upon government grants. Its solvency became evident in 1981 when the group winded itself with a closing balance of Rs. 21,000/- ( a huge amount in those days), after giving parting gifts to all its artists. This amount was donated to Sh. Rajiv Gandhi for the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund. Indeed, a rare performance of an amateur theatre group in the Hindi region! So popular were Ramesh Mehta’s plays that the tickets of these plays used to be sold even at a premium, and people from the other cities like Meerut, Bareilly, Muzaffarnagar etc. used to come to Delhi to see his plays only. He was a star-actor in his days, and it was his artistic charisma along with the organisational skills or R.M. Kaul and the support of M.N. Kapur that the Three Arts Club became the solitary example of an amateur theatre group in North India that thrived for over 35 years on audience support and box-office returns. The Club performed more than 1200 shows of 27 plays in its history of around 40 years, which is a record for an amateur theatre group in North India.

Ramesh Mehta has been awarded with Chamanlal Memorial Award for lifetime achievemeht, Sahitya Kala Parishad, Delhi Award, Delhi Natya Sangh Award, Uttar Pradesh Sangeet Natak Akademi Award, besides many other awards like the best playwright award etc. Talent of Ramesh Mehta as a great actor was recognised recently by Sangeet Natak Akademy, when he was awarded the coveted Sangeet Natak Akademi Award for acting for the year 2007^[4][5] Hii jitu here

Plays written by Ramesh Mehta[link]

• INDIA TODAY---------1949
• DAHEJ------------------1950
• DASTOORI (DAMAD)-1950
• FAISLA---------------1951
• APRADHI KAUN-----1952
• JAMANA---------------1952
• HAMARA GAON---------1954
• ULJHAN---------------------1955
• DHONG----------------------1956
• UNDER SECRETARY—1958
• DHAI AKHAR PREM KA ----1959
• ROTI AUR BETI----------1960
• BADE AADMI--------------1966
• KHULI BAAT---------------1969

One act and short plays by Ramesh Mehta[link]

• HISAB BARABAR
• PAGAL
• KYA MUSIBAT HAI
• LAKSHMI KE PUJARI
• SHARARAT
• NAMAK KA DAROGA
• PANCH PARMESHWAR
• SWANG
• BHAI-BAND
• PANCH LAKH
• ANDHERA AUR UJALA
• MOORKH BILLIYAN
• EK THA BUDDHA

Plays directed by Ramesh Mehta[link]

• PAGAL
• FAISLA
• ULJHAN
• DHONG
• UNDER SECRETARY
• ROTI AUR BETI
• BADE AADMI
• KHULI BAAT
• PAISA BOLTA HAI
• WAH RE INSAAN
• KATHA NAQAD NARAIN KI
• RANG KACHCHE AUR PAKKE
• INSPECTOR GENERAL
• BIN CHEHRON KE PURUSH

Plays adapted and translated by Ramesh Mehta[link]

(Including original name, writer and language)

• PAISA BOLTA HAI Kanchanranga Shambhu Mitra - Bengali
• WAH RE INSAAN Maro Mohenjodaro N.R. Nandi - Telegu
• KATHA NAQAD NARAIN KI Leela Bakul Tripathi - Gujrati
• RANG KACHCHE AUR PAKKE Vasant Kanetkar - Marathi
• INSPECTOR GENERAL The Government Inspector Nikolai Gogol - Russian
• AUR BHAGWAN DEKHTA RAHA Jeeva Shiva Che Bhent Mama Warerkar - Marathi
• BIN CHEHRON KE PURUSH Kasturi Mrig Vasant Kanetkar - Marathi

References[link]