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.”
This Ramadan, families in Pakistan dust off old Ludo boards... and memories
https://arab.news/wcwsf
This Ramadan, families in Pakistan dust off old Ludo boards... and memories
- Pakistan ranks highest in the world for downloads of the game’s online version
- Members of older generations say the game is becoming a family tradition again
Imran Khan’s party shutdown draws mixed response; government calls it ‘ineffective’
- Ex-PM Khan’s PTI party had called for a ‘shutter-down strike’ to protest Feb. 8, 2024 general election results
- While businesses reportedly remained closed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, they continued as normal elsewhere
ISLAMABAD: A nationwide “shutter-down strike” called by former prime minister Imran Khan’s party drew a mixed response in Pakistan on Sunday, underscoring political polarization in the country two years after a controversial general election.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PIT) opposition party had urged the masses to shut businesses across the country to protest alleged rigging on the second anniversary of the Feb. 8, 2024 general election.
Local media reported a majority of businesses remained closed in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, governed by the PTI, while business continued as normal in other provinces as several trade associations distanced themselves from the strike call.
Arab News visited major markets in Islamabad’s G-6, G-9, I-8 and F-6 sectors, as well as commercial hubs in Rawalpindi, which largely remained operational on Sunday, a public holiday when shops, restaurants and malls typically remain open in Pakistan.
“Pakistan’s constitution says people will elect their representatives. But on 8th February 2024, people were barred from exercising their voting right freely,” Allama Raja Nasir Abbas Jafri, the PTI opposition leader in the Senate, said at a protest march near Islamabad’s iconic Faisal Mosque.
Millions of Pakistanis voted for national and provincial candidates during the Feb. 8, 2024 election, which was marred by a nationwide shutdown of cellphone networks and delayed results, leading to widespread allegations of election manipulation by the PTI and other opposition parties. The caretaker government at the time and the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) both rejected the allegations.
Khan’s PTI candidates contested the Feb. 8 elections as independents after the party was barred from the polls. They won the most seats but fell short of the majority needed to form a government, which was made by a smattering of rival political parties led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. The government insists the polling was conducted transparently and that Khan’s party was not denied a fair chance.
Authorities in the Pakistani capital deployed a heavy police contingent on the main road leading to the Faisal Mosque on Sunday. Despite police presence and the reported arrest of some PTI workers, Jafri led local PTI members and dozens of supporters who chanted slogans against the government at the march.
“We promise we will never forget 8th February,” Jafri said.
The PTI said its strike call was “successful” and shared videos on official social media accounts showing closed shops and markets in various parts of the country.
The government, however, dismissed the protest as “ineffective.”
“The public is fed up with protest politics and has strongly rejected PTI’s call,” Pakistan’s Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said on X.
“It’s Sunday, yet there is still hustle and bustle.”
Ajmal Baloch, All Pakistan Traders Association president, said they neither support such protest calls, nor prevent individuals from closing shops based on personal political affiliation.
“It’s a call from a political party and we do not close businesses on calls of any political party,” Baloch told Arab News.
“We only give calls of strike on issues related to traders.”
Khan was ousted from power in April 2022 after what is widely believed to be a falling out with the country’s powerful generals. The army denies it interferes in politics. Khan has been in prison since August 2023 and faces a slew of legal challenges that ruled him out of the Feb. 8 general elections and which he says are politically motivated to keep him and his party away from power.
In Jan. 2025, an accountability court convicted Khan and his wife in the £190 million Al-Qadir Trust land corruption case, sentencing him to 14 years and her to seven years after finding that the trust was used to acquire land and funds in exchange for alleged favors. The couple denies any wrongdoing.
