Chak Ta Lok

21 Ramadan 1429
Salam

There are many names to this game. ‘Police Sentry’, ‘Police Entry’, ‘Police and Thief’ and ‘Police Sanctuary’ are among the names it is known by. The most unique name I have ever heard of is ‘Chak Ta lok’. Well… I don’t even know if it is the correct spelling but that is what it sounds like.

What even more interesting is the ‘jingle’ to form the two teams. Below is the jingle sounds like.

Chak Ta Lok Tule Ha
Chak Juking Tule Chak
Mana Guting Mana Stem
Wam Sam Sikudis Sting

Don’t ask me what it means. I don’t know. But back in 1978 and 1979, we used that jingle to form two groups to play the game. One team becomes a police team and the other team will assume the criminal role. The police team is obviously responsible to catch all the criminal group members and lock them in jail (the compounded area drawn on the ground).

Once caught, the criminal is lock in the jail as prisoner and the only way out is the rescue effort by any other member of the criminal group. The ‘rescue’ is simple. Simply force your way thru the guards and touch (tag) any part of prisoner’s body and the prisoner is free to run away. This must be done without getting caught, else the rescuer becomes a prisoner too.

The mission of the criminal group in this game is to avoid the jail (get caught). The mission becomes more critical if there are members to be rescued.

The good strategy in this game is to catch the leader (the toughest among them) of the criminal team and lock him away. This somehow will get the rest of the team to put extra effort to free the leader. The ambush from all angles is quite difficult to be handled by the police teams.

The game end when all of the criminal team members are in jail. The two teams then shall switch roles if they were to play more game. And… in this game, normally you do not want to be the police. I used to wonder why?

Ramli AR

photo is from thestar website for illustration purposes only.