Khela Hobe

"Khela Hobe" let the game begin, and the game set and match was won hands down by Didi last time around. But the game is far from over, may be it has just begun. Political games, strategic games, war games are played more on the mind and in the mind than in the battlefield. Come election time and the games of political parties of all hues begin, right from the time of seat distribution, where they have to checkmate the rival aspirants, to evolving strategies to keep his core voter base and poach on the challenger's is the key to winning this round. This game remains the same, the canvas grows bigger from panchayat to national level and then onto even international level.

Eric Berne in his classic, "Games People Play" has covered the psychological aspects of our behavioural traits. These games translate into bigger games when nations are at it but principle remains the same, the objective too remains the same our minds. 

During the Raj, Afghanistan was where the ‘big game’ was being played between the British and Russians, the times changed, but even after a century the arena remained the same, just the empires changed. What exactly is this game that people keep referring to? Obviously it is not a sport but it is more than that, a blood sport without actually drawing any blood except when it inevitably ends up causing bloodshed as a consequence. All the wars were a result of these games.  Incidentally during the Raj even hunting of wild animals was “big game”, this murderous penchant called shikar ended up rendering many a species extinct thus endangering the environment as well.  

Here we are concentrating on mind games, on a gigantic chess board, where every move invites a counter move and the maverick knight who can move two and a half steps is the one to watch out for. I wonder how many of you can recall Mr RajNarain, a former minister in the Janta Party who humbled the mighty sitting PM Mrs Indira Gandhi at the hustings in 1977. A man devoted to  former PM Chaudhry Charan Singh, who has recently  been awarded Bharat Ratna posthumously. Raj Narain was the one who can even be blamed for the imposition of Emergency indirectly, as it was his petition against Mrs Gandhi which resulted in her disqualification by Allahabad High Court and prompted her to impose Emergency. There was no public bugle call for the sport to begin then, but the game was deadly as it changed the course of history of our country.

India is supposed to be where Chess originated, known as Chaturang in ancient times, although we as a nation took leave of our strategic sense for more than a millennium, thus ending up under foreign domination. It is only now when Vishwanathan Anand brought back glory as the World Champion in Chess that there are host of other young grandmasters, with Praggnanandhaa being the latest and probably the brightest, who have dominated the world of Chess again. May be it is renaissance for our strategic sense as well. China is supposed to have a strong strategic culture and Indians were supposed to be lacking in this department at least until about a decade or so back, some of us would like to believe that. Americans are the ones who were reported to have made this observation, and typically their strategic sense is quite obvious as has been seen in Afghanistan or Vietnam. Their games unfortunately may appear strategic but in the long run turn out to be highly short sighted and end up being disastrous. Indians are synonymous with Elephants, for their slow progress but mind you our sense of Strategy is not for a decade or two but it is for a millennia or more, after all each of our Yug, Sat, Treta, Dwapar and now Kalyug have millions of years between them. The cosmic game is on I wonder if the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh too indulge in this game, where we are just puppets dancing to their tunes.