Sinhala Tamil New Year Traditional Games
| April New Year Marathon (Gama haraha diweema) |
As for the most of such festivals, this New Year festival also started from the ‘Marathon’. Usually this includes competitors to complete a track which usually covers the residential area where the games festival is organized. At least 2-3 km is included for the runners to complete.
Coconut scraping is another fun event. Usually ladies enjoy this event much as it is one of the things day do at home for cooking.
Kana mutti bindeema is another fun game which is like a must in any New year games festival. Usually
for this game, there are few clay pots which are filled with sand or water and hanged in a row. Among these pots there is one pot which is filled with blue water.
Completion is to hit the clay pot which has blue water. To start the game, the eyes of the competitors are closed using a piece of cloth. They are provided with a bamboo stick to hit the pot.
The competitor who hit the pot which contains blue water will win the game. Even if there is a winner or no,
this game is a fun event for all those who participate for the festival.
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| Coconut Scraping Competition |
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| Kana Mutti (Clay pots are ready for the game) |
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| Pillow Fighting Game (Kotta pora) |
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| Lissana gaha nageema (The Slippery Pole) |
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| Watching at the slippery pole (lissana gaha nageema) |
Another game is
Kotta pora which means pillow fight.It is basically, two competitors fight with a pillow till one person is fallen down. Usually a place is prepared using a pole placed horizontally at about 2 m in height. This can be placed in other vertically placed poles/columns. Then 2 competitors sit on both sides and beat each other using a bag (pillow) full of straw or some light weight things. This will continue until one falls off.
Climbing the slippery pole (Lissana gaha nageema) is another game.For this game, a very long timber pole is fixed into the ground. A flag is placed at the top of the pole
.(tree).Then the organizers will apply some slippery thing like grease on this pole. The first person who climbs to the top of this slippery tree and who gets the flag is the winner.
However, this game is played as a team. Those who participate for the game will repeat their attempt and
remove the grease on each attempt. Finally one person will be able to get the flag. Usually the price is a good amount of money and the winner will share it among all those who participated in the team.
This is actually not an easy game, it requires lot of energy and also climbing skill. But there are people
who like to participate for this game. Those who watch the game can give some donations (money) for the final prize. Organizers of the festival collect this type of donations and add that to the final prize.
Most of these festivals end with the competition of selecting ‘New Year Princess and Prince’ (Avurudu kumari/kumara).This competition is organized in national level too where beautiful girls and guys participate.However,in this New Year Festival which was organized by residents around the area,it was a small competition for girls and boys below certain age limit.
Above are our little girls who participated for the competition.All these girls are from our neighbors homes and for me all of them are beautiful and New Year Princesses.
They are wearing a traditional Sri Lankan dress,specially for girls.
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| Coconut Scraping Competition |
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| Kana Mutti (Clay pots are ready for the game) |
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| Pillow Fighting Game (Kotta pora) |
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| Lissana gaha nageema (The Slippery Pole) |
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| Watching at the slippery pole (lissana gaha nageema) |
These are few of the traditional games.But there are lot more fun games which all can participate during the festival.Do you have such traditional events?Do you have any photo story for this week?Please share those.
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