In Pol Keliya the villagers divide themselves into two factions called yatipila and udupila and the leaders of the two parties take a fixed number of husked cocoanuts and place themselves at a distance of 30 feet and one bowls a nut at his adversary who meets it with another in his hand. This goes on till the receiver’s nut is broken when he begins to bowl. The side which exhausts the nuts of the other party is declared the winner.
Dodan Keliya is a game similar to the Pol Keliya the oranges taking the place of the cocoanuts.
In An Keliya a trunk of a tree is buried at the centre of an open space of ground; a few yards off is placed the log of a cocoanut tree about 20 feet high in a deep hole large enough for it to move backwards and forwards and to the top of it thick ropes are fastened. The villagers divide themselves into two parties as in Pol Keliya, and bring two forked antlers which they hook together and tying one to the foot of the trunk and the other to that of the log pull away with all their might till one of them breaks.
In all these semi-religious games the winning party goes in procession round the village and the defeated side has to undergo a lot of abuse and insult intended to remove the bad effects of the defeat.
Children in addition to their swings, tops, bamboo pop-guns, cut water, bows and arrows, water squirts, cat’s cradles and bull roarers have their own special games.
They play at hide and seek, the person hiding giving a loud ‘hoo’ call that the others may start the search; or one of them gets to an elevated place and tauntingly cries out “the king is above and the scavenger below” and the others try to drag him down.
Several children hold their hands together forming a line and one of them representing a hare comes running from a distance and tries to break through without being caught; or one of them becomes a cheetah and the rest form a line of goats holding on to each other’s back. The cheetah addresses the foremost goat saying “eluvan kannayi man âvê.” (I have come to eat the goats) and tries to snatch away one of the players at the back; who avoids his clutches singing “elubeti kapiya sundire” (go and eat the tasty goat dung); if one is caught he has to hold on to the back of the cheetah and the game continues till all are snatched away.
When the children are indoors they amuse themselves in various ways.
They hold the backs of each other’s hands with their thumb and fore-finger, move them up and down singing “kaputu kâk kâk kâk, goraka dên dên dên, amutu vâv vâv vâv, dorakada gahê puvak puvak, batapandurê bulat bulat, usi kaputâ, usî,” and let go each other’s hold at the end of the jingle, which means that “crows swinging on a gamboge-tree (goraka) take to their wings when chased away (usi, usi), and there are nuts in the areca-tree by the house and betel-creepers in the bamboo-grove.” They also close their fists and keep them one over the other, pretending to form a cocoanut-tree; the eldest takes hold of each hand in turn, asks its owner, “achchiyé achchiyé honda pol gediyak tiyanavâ kadannada?” (grandmother, grandmother, there is a good cocoanut, shall I pluck it); and, when answered, “Oh, certainly” (bohoma hondayi), brings it down. A mimetic performance of husking the nuts, breaking them, throwing out the water, scraping the pulp and cooking some eatable follows this.
They twist the fingers of the left hand, clasp them with the right, leaving only the finger-tips visible and get each other to pick out the middle finger.