Manjadis and Pallanguzhi

We called them ‘Manjadi’s – and I have never known them by any other name. The little shiny, smooth red seeds of an obscure plant. Tree, creeper or shrub, I do not know. The parent – unglamorous and given to anonymity. The offspring – beauteous and impossible to ignore. Falling far from the tree that gave them birth. Splattered across the ground like ruby stones.

Manjadis were found aplenty in my Thatha’s (Grandfather) home in Kerala. And I was always fascinated with them. Amazed that nobody on the planet considered them valuable. You didn’t buy manjadis. You couldn’t sell them either. There was no market for them. You just picked them off the ground, played with them and threw them away.  

You see, manjadis were not useful in the traditional sense.  Not edible, nor medicinal. Just wastefully gorgeous. They didn’t play hard-to get either – not hidden underground in some hard to reach pocket of the planet. They were gleefully, shamelessly, abundant. Nobody I know deliberately cultivated the manjadi plant – It was a weed. That produced a stunning, but useless, seed.

As far back as my mind is able to travel, manjadi’s were a permanent fixture of my summer holidays in Kerala. They conjure memories of carefree afternoons spent with fellow cousin marauders-wandering to the desolate edges of thatha’s expansive home. That portion overrun with creepers, weeds, spiders, insects, snakes (according to legend) –and manjadi plants.

Scanning, searching. Collecting, hoarding.  Glossy, Sassy, Fiery Red Manjadis.

And then, running back to the safety and noise of the main courtyard. To display our loot with pride, and to gloat over the collections of a well-spent afternoon. And to play endlessly, for many days thereafter, with the worthless treasures. 
Get a bowlful and run your hands through them again and again! Feel the cold smooth sensation on your skin!  Pour them from hand to hand and see them fall like red drops of rain!  Or fill up your dress with them! Lie down and pour them over yourself!  Arrange them into patterns!  Play shop-shop and use them as coins!!  Oh, the possibilities were endless! But any mention of manjadis would be incomplete without talking about pallanguzhi. Pallanguzhi – a board game played across South India, I reckon, but for me, another very special memory at thatha’s house.

I call pallanguzhi a board game – but in reality – it was neither. The ‘Board’ was a flat, smooth rectangular block of wood about the length of the forearm and about as wide as an adult’s palm. It had 12 (or 14) equally spaced hollows -depressions - scooped out. 2 rows of 6- or 7- hollows each. And you didn’t play one ‘game’ with the pallanguzhi.  As with playing cards or marbles, the pallanguzhi allowed for several games to be played. But for every one of those games, manjadis were the essential currency. Like the marbles used to play checkers, at thatha’s home there was no pallanguzhi without manjadis.  Bat and Ball. Pallanguzhi and Manjadi.  Immutable pairs. In my mind, at-least.

Each time I discovered that people played Pallanguzhi with other things as well – shells, or marbles perhaps, somehow, it just felt off-beat. Not quite right.

Each time we went back home to Baroda in faraway Gujarat, the pallanguzhi and the manjadis stayed behind. And I would be reunited with both the next summer vacation.  Thatha’s house in Kerala was a place frozen in time. Nothing changed when we came back year on year - and so too with the pallanguzhi and the manjadis. The same weathered block of wood. And lots of shiny red manjadis. Parts of memory, tucked away along with memories of my grandfather’s house.

It is funny how things turn up when you least expect them to. I stopped visiting thatha’s house in my teens.   Thatha had passed on, and there was nobody to go back to. The pallanguzhi probably thrown away and the manjadi plant destroyed most likely. Who knew?

When, in my thirties, I moved to Bangkok, I discovered that Thailand played this familiar board game too! Familiar blocks of wood with familiar depressions populated ‘Thai curio’ stores across the country. I bought my daughter one, and we played with marbles instead of manjadis. Not quite the same.  When I spotted a pallanguzhi at an antique store in Chiang Mai – this one a relic from some home in Indonesia – I jumped at the opportunity to have my own weathered beaten down pallanguzhi.

Last year, I moved to Pune after several years in Bangkok. My mother visited me soon after, and one day, discovered the manjadis of her childhood and mine, splattered across the muddy tracks of the neighbourhood playground. Priceless, worthless manjadis – right in my backyard! Who knew!!

Trayi collected them with enthusiasm – an activity for one evening. And we sat down to play pallanguzhi. The games of yore were forgotten, but new rules of play created, and a few glorious hours spent with the pallanguzhi and the manjadis.