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.

"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.

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.

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, 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.