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How ancient games are teaching urban India about itself
The email opens with a line that stops you: “This course is not intended for children.” It is a workshop on traditional Indian games. And somehow, that makes perfect sense.
In cities like Bengaluru today, culture isn’t something we simply inherit — it’s something we return to. Intentionally. Curiously. Sometimes even academically. Inside the ‘Bharateeya-Kreedaa’ workshop, a group gathers around a board that feels familiar but distant. Someone remembers seeing it at their grandparents’ house. No one remembers how to play.
There’s a pause. Then a beginning.
The facilitator doesn’t just explain rules. They trace origins — how these games emerged, what they encoded, why they endured. What starts as play slowly becomes something else: attention, pattern, meaning. And that shift is the point.
“Children inherit culture. Adults have to go looking for it.”
For many urban adults, traditional knowledge wasn’t lost — it was bypassed. School didn’t teach it. Life didn’t pause for it. What once moved casually through homes now needs to be sought out. Workshops like this don’t just revive games. They reframe them: not as nostalgia, but as systems; not as pastime, but as pedagogy.
Because these games were never just games. They carried ways of thinking about chance, decision-making, ethics, and life itself.
Across the city, this isn’t an isolated phenomenon. More and more people are stepping into spaces like this — mural workshops, dance studios, craft sessions — not to become experts, but to reconnect. To understand. To return, but with awareness.
Join the workshopBharateeya-KreedaaDates: 5–12 April 2026 · 8 online sessions via ZoomKannada: 7–8 PM · English: 9–10 PM · Ages 14+Fees: ₹1,000 (India) · ₹2,000 (NRIs)Tutors: Vid. Arjun Bharadwaj & Dr. Arathi VBRegister: 9611131760 / 9480318113
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