Time changes everything. New traditions replace old ones. Human beings change with time, move on and it’s a pity that we change so much and so quickly that sometimes we even forget who we were. Like anyone remember this dance called Kikli? Have you seen it before in real life? Yeah .. No? Some of you old enough, who spent a part of their childhood in the old city like me, and who are familiar with the village life must have seen Kikli which used to be very popular dance among young girls. My Nana had a big haveli nama house in old Anarkali, near now-a-days food street. I have forgotten many things about that house, I was too young, but there are a few things/people that I still remember very clearly.
Source: http://www.thepunjab.comOne of them is an old man who used to visit us very often with his family. They used to bring us large boree's (bags) which usually had wheat or rice. According to my mother he was an old class mate of Nana and they went to primary school together in Amritsar and when Pakistan came into being, they migrated in same military truck. I don’t remember his name but for the sake of convenience let’s call him Khuda Bakhsh. He was a tall man with dark complexion and I always saw him wearing a very clean white tehmed (a kind of white dhoti and no, there isn’t any English word for it), a white qameez (a shirt) and a pagri (turban) which was golden fom the top (traditional Punjabi dress). So Khuda Bakhsh lived somewhere in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) and once or twice each year, brought us boree's of wheat and rice. He and his family used to come in their tractor. In the evenings the elders used to have a Huqa session which was also a time for a little gup shup (chat). They were served with Gurh (sugar bars?) and tea; though Khuda Bakhsh never had tea as far as I can recall.
We had two huge trees in our Sehn (courtyard), one of them was Jamun (is there a word for Jamun in English?), and the other one I don’t remember. The whole Muhalla (neighborhood) used to come and eat those Jamuns in our house and yet the fruit was in such a huge quantity that we used to send buckets of them to our relatives in Gulberg. In afternoons a few teenage girls, probably Khuda Bakhsh’s daughters and two of my cousins, used to do Kikli in our courtyard. We, the under ten kids, used to watch them and there was always a loud cheer when one of the girls fell on the ground. It was not anything like embarrassment though. Just one minute of laughter, cheers and catching breathe and then back to Kikli again. Yeah, it was fun and things were very simple in that old house. Most of my happy childhood memories, that I can still recall, are from that period.
For those of you who still don’t know what Kikli (also called Keekali in East Punjab) is and wondering what the hell I am talking about here is something about Kikli. It’s an old traditional dance, or sport should I say, which is done in pairs of even numbers. Before beginning the dance, the two participants stand face to face with their feet close to each other’s and their bodies inclined back. Standing in this pose the arms of the dancers (or sportswomen should I say?) are stretched to the maximum limit and their hands are interlocked firmly. The dance is performed when the pairs, maintaining this pose, wheel round and round in a fast movement at the same spot with the feet serving as the pivotal points. The girls sing as they swirl around with colorful ‘orhnis’ or ‘daupttas’ flowing from their heads and anklets producing tinkling melodies. There is a rich repertoire of traditional songs available that are used to accompany the Kikli dance. Most of these songs consist merely of loosely rhyming lines without underlying theme. One of the examples that I found from
here is:
Kikli kleer di,
Pag mere vir di,
Daupatta mere bhai da,
Phitte mun jawai da.
I know many modern Lahoris will find it very funny and ‘paindu’ enough but I guess we were not worried about it during those simple days. Almost everyone was paindu :) or there were a very few Babu's should I say :). The TV invasion in villages, dish antenna, cable, computers, video games and all the related modern things were just beginning to reach us. It was the late 80’s and the 90’s that changed our lifestyle.
So anyways coming back to Kikli in our courtyard, this beautiful tradition continued for a few years as far I can I can remember. But after Nana passed away and our family sold that old house (later somebody turned it into a small shopping center) and moved to new modern kothi (modern house), this family tradition ended. There was no courtyard with huge trees in our new home and I guess Khuda Bakhsh had no one for his Huqa session and the little gup shup. I never saw him again.
About 3 years ago I visited Lyallpur (Faisalabad) to attend a colleague’s wedding and I specially spent a couple of days in two nearby villages but I couldn’t find anyone doing Kikli in fields or anywhere. TV, VCR and Dish had reached those villages too and most of the young people were more interested in spending their afternoons and evenings watching programs, cricket matches or Indian movies on VCR. Somebody told me that in West Punjab (Pakistani Punjab) these traditional dances are slowly becoming extinct but Kikli atleast, is still very popular in Indian side of Punjab.
I don’t know if it is good or bad thing that many of our old traditions are diminishing slowly (not just dances); some already have in my view. But I think kids and teenagers of this modern time are probably missing those simple, beautiful little things that we used to enjoy.
