RAWALPINDI: As people across Pakistan are urged to sequester at home to contain coronavirus, the pace of Ramadan in households has taken an even slower pace than traditionally practiced.
To pass the time, many are dusting off long-forgotten board games and sitting down with family for some friendly competition. In Pakistan, it seems the most popular board game hidden away in old storage cabinets is the classic ‘Ludo.’
A colorful board game that can be played between two people to groups of four, Ludo has been a long time staple of Pakistani childhoods and families.
“We used to play so much as kids but as time went on I feel people stopped playing,” Darkhshanda Asghar, 82, a grandmother of 10 living in Islamabad told Arab News over the phone.
“We started [playing again] being mostly at home, but because we have Iftari together everyone is sitting in one place... playing a game after is becoming, hopefully, a new tradition,” she said and called it a blessing for the family during a scary time.
Ludo is an offshoot of an even older and certainly more complicated board game from India, around since the 6th century, called Pachisi. In 1896, Ludo was patented by the British Royal Navy, birthing many popular offshoots of the game including the USA’s Parcheezi, and other variations of the game found in Spain, Colombia, Ghana, China, Singapore and Malaysia.
In Ludo, players compete in both a game of strategy and chance to get their four pieces around the board and back to homebase while avoiding their competitors’ tokens cutting them off the board and forcing them to start over.
When COVID-19 brought Pakistanis indoors, downloads for Ludo Star 2, an online app version of the game also skyrocketed, according to Sensor Tower, a San Francisco based data platform for apps. The website also says that among the 5 million downloads for the game that occurred after March, Pakistan ranks the highest for the game’s downloads. The online version allows you to play with friends or strangers and has a built-in messaging platform.
Mehrbano Raja, 27, who hails from Lahore has been humorously tweeting about the small fights breaking out in her home during family rounds of Ludo and said some of her best childhood memories were of the classic game.
“I have so many memories of my parents and siblings playing Ludo growing up,” Raja told Arab News over the phone.
“I can see it in my head, six of us on my parents bed, making alliances and taunting each other and lots of laughter... some tantrums,” she laughed.
“Suddenly it stopped, I don’t know why,” she said. “The Internet came into our lives or teenage angst kicked in.”
For Raja, there is a nostalgia rooted to the game, and after years, the old memories have come to life again.
“It reminds me of a time when I didn’t feel unproductive, or worry about competing tasks,” she said and continued with a laugh.
“Then the main distraction would be when the telephone rang and our parents yelled at one of us to answer it... because we did not even have cordless phones then.”