For those who grew up in the Nineties, spending time with friends meant hours of sitting around a Business board, trying to get out of jail and wondering if they had enough money to buy Bangalore or Ootacamund, hoping that one wouldn’t land on a long snake while playing snakes and ladders or just playing a simple game of Ludo. With the popularity of video and computer games, board games took a backseat. But Chennai-based Neha Murthy plans to revive a range of Indian board games through her brand Pachisi. The difference here is that, the games are printed on fabric instead of on cardboard and paper.
What essentially started as a final year project for Neha, who was pursuing a Masters in Fine Arts at Stella Maris College, became Pachisi last month. “I’ve always wanted to design something for children and I went through a lot of ideas. Finally, this one received good response,” she says. Designing the games on fabric was only natural not because Neha specialised in textiles but because some of the games were originally played on fabric, like Pachisi from which the brand derives its name. The boards are crafted from embroidered, appliquéd and screen-printed textiles and are initially hand-drawn and then transferred onto a computer where it’s printed on the fabric.
The games range from chess, snakes and ladders, goats and tigers (Aadu puli Aattam in Tamil), pachisi, tic-tac-toe in various themes such as Haveli that features Indian palaces and royalty, Chalti Gaadi, a quirky take on Indian roads and signage. Currently retailing online, Neha even offers personalised games. “Recently, a customer had asked me to design a game that her grandmother used to play. She gave me the basic structure of the game but left the design to me,” she says.
The games, she says, come with fabric bags for packaging and wooden coins or cowrie shells to play with. And since the ‘board’ can be folded, it is easy to store and carry around while travelling. She also admits that a lot of research went into this. “I knew that Pachisi was originally played on fabric and not many people offered that here. Since there was a market for something like this, I started reading up on how these games evolved and Pachisi was born.”
The games are priced Rs. 750 upwards. Visit pachisi.co.in for details.
