They call it "kabaddi"

I was having dinner with Arindam, Matty, and Suva at Bhojohori Manna when I looked up to the telly and saw a game I initially described as patintero on steroids. Patintero is a street game I grew up playing (and something my nephews and nieces have no concept of, with their tablets and smartphones). The objective of the game is to cross over a line without being tagged by the person guarding the line. This is why I was quite shocked that a game that looked similar was being played by muscular athletes as an actual sport!

Turns out that this sport is called kabaddi. The players' objective was to cross from one side of the court to another, and then go back to the "home" side, all while reciting "kabaddi". The opposite team had to make sure that the other team couldn't go to the other side of the court and/or they couldn't return to the home side. See, sounds very much like patintero...

But kabaddi is a whole different level altogether because it's a contact sport that reminds me also of the intensity of rugby. To me, it felt like it could get painful fast, really fast! I don't think I'd like to see it live at this point.









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