Board Walking...(part 5) : Caromba!

Carom board was not one of my favorite games, mostly because I was really bad at it. But it was an interesting game. For some reason, I used to find a lot of resemblance between Carom board and billiard. I used to know the game as billiard, not pool. However, now, after knowing the difference, I can see that the game is more related to pool. Anyways, why the resemblance? Because both in pool and carom, the balls (guti's, in carom's case) needs to be arranged in a pre-defined manner. In Carom, the striker needs to hit the arrangement of to begin the game. And similarly, in Billiard, the first player hits the arrangement with the cue ball (the white one) in order to start the game.

In pool, you add ballspin, and there's also a similar concept in Carom. In pool, you need to "pocket" all the balls of a type (striped or non-striped) in order to win. The first person to do so wins the game. In the traditional carom game, there are white and black gutis, and one red guti. All the gutis (tokens) are of circular nature, with a few layers within. A "striker" is used for aiming at the other tokens. The game board is a huge, wooden square board. You have four holes (pockets) at the four corners, and there is a somewhat complicated layout in the middle. The gutis need to be placed in an organized manner upon the layout. The red guti is placed in the middle, and three lines of white gutis are connected with it. The black gutis are scattered around this thing. A strategically and skillfully aimed first strike can pocket the 3 white gutis residing at the ends of the lines. That was one move for the masters of the game.

The player who strikes first gets white, and the other one gets black. Similar to pool, the person who pockets all the tokens of a particular color. along with the red one wins the game. If one pockets the red, he has to follow through with a guti of his own color. If failed, the red is returned back on the board. A person can keep on getting strikes until he keeps on pocketing at least one of his gutis. So theoritically, it is possible to finish the game without even letting the opponent touch the game. But I never seen such a match in my life. Maximum four players can play this game, with 2 people in each team. There is an "allowed striker placing area" for each player. You'll have to place your striker within this marked space, connected by 4 large circles and 2 straight lines placed above each other with equal distance between them.

I don't know anything about the origin of this game, but whoever invented it must've thought a lot before coming up with the final game board. Such a simple setup, and yet demanding so much strategy and skill! There were so many moves, and so much to do.

There was also a variant of this game, where 4 players could play independently. We used to call the game "Kolagach", that is Banana Tree, for a somewhat logical reason. This time around, the gutis were placed alternately, above each other. As far as I remember, there were 8 white and 8 black gutis. So the setup was like this:

W, b, w, b, w, b, w, b, red, w, b, w, b, w, b, w, b

White was pointed as 10, and black as 5, and red as 50. The person collecting the most points would win that round. But there was another aspect of this game, the aspect of making someone "fokir" (bankrupt). How this worked? After each game, all the person was supposed to contribute the same amount of tokens as the lowest earner received. If a person didn't earn anything, he'd get knocked out. And if he earned only 5, others would contribute 5 each, and the next game would have a 20 point stake. The game would continue up to everyone other than the winner becoming fokirs. Hehe..

In this game (Carom Board as a whole, not Kolagach in particular), dad would become my partner. I didn't have a carom board at home, but my uncles had one. The stage for the games would be Granny's, and this was the time when we stopped playing scrabble. I hated the fact, and I tried to lure the people towards scrabble. But my efforts weren't fruitful. I never became good at this game..never. I watched curiously and somewhat jealously(is that a word?) while others pocketed the gutis. I could seldom pocket gutis, and I was really bad when it came to pocketing distant gutis. So I had to be on constant scoldings from the paternal side :-

There was another aspect of the game. Sometimes the board would get too dry and stagnant. Kinda like a cricket pitch without grass, no bounce, and all balls coming low. In those times, "Boric Powder" was sprayed throughout the board, and the interface got more slippery, and it was easier to pocket the tokens. Sometimes when Boric Powder was not available, flour was applied. Special emphasis was given on the areas surroundint the "pockets". It was really frustrating to see gutis popping out of the pockets!

Later on, I got a carom board on my birthday, and I used to play it a lot at home, too. But again, I couldn't do well either. The carom board was around for quite a while. Eventually arcades and outdoor games came in, and it went to the back of a door. Oneday, the carom board was sold off to some scrap dealer, along with a lot of other wrecked furniture.

I didn't even think about it then, but now I am feeling kind of sad.