COMMENT “Each side can touch the ball three times before sending it back across the net.”

Chinlone is related to Malaysian sepak raga. The translation in English is often ‘caneball’, though the name seems to seldom ring a bell. Funnily enough, however, though I have never seen the latter, I come across the former quite often in Malacca and other places.

It is played informally, as entertainment, by various groups of Myanmar immigrant workers. It must be said however that some groups, such as the Chin (who are mostly Christian), prefer to play soccer instead of chinlone.

In Malacca, too, sometimes the guys will play soccer instead of chinlone. Soccer has the advantage that larger numbers of people can participate in the same game.

The people I know in Malacca are usually both Burmese and Rakhine. The former are the majority population of Myanmar/Burma, whereas the latter are a small coastal ethnic group in Rakhine state, where there has been a good deal of tension between Buddhists and Muslims.

Their languages - Burmese and Rakhine or Arakanese -  though related, are mutually unintelligible. Occasionally other people - say, a couple of Karen, another ethnic group - will also join the game.

The match is played in a vast lawn in one of the residential neighbourhoods. Malaysians do not often use the lawn themselves, nor seem to mind that Myanmar workers will play on it every single evening towards dusk. There are seldom more than two dozen people around, and often just a handful of players come up. Some people are nevertheless there virtually every single evening.

Traditionally chinlone is played in a circle, with players touching the caneball - made of rattan - with their heads and feet only. Here, there is an old, ragged net spread across the field (demarcated with strings on the bare ground), fixed on two ramshackle, makeshift poles. Amazingly to me, it is left always there (where I come from someone might take it away just for fun, in spite of it being old and tattered).

Three a side

Two teams of three each play one game for about 15 to 20 minutes. The score determines when teams will change side at ‘half-time’. Whichever side scores 15 first wins. There is always an informal referee squatting on the ground near the net who keeps score. Players always place bets, but they are usually very modest: RM1 per player per game seems to be standard.

Many people simply come to socialise, not to play, like John, an electrician who lives in a house nearby. He is also Rakhine. He tells me that he is always very tired because of the long hours of work, and therefore never plays. I also notice that he smokes, what does not help. In fact, he also comes to buy betel nut from the organiser of the game.

While the game unfolds, both audience and players chew betel nut quids. Some also drink very cheap local whisky out of small bottles. I am on occasion offered some: the taste is vile even when mixed with coke. They usually mix it with water only as it is cheaper.

The betel nut is called ‘kunya’ in Burmese. I am given one quid and feel dizzy after about five minutes. I do not chew very hard, though, and eventually feel compelled to spit the whole quid out, though that is not standard procedure (you have to chew it quite hard and for quite a while, too). I am also slightly nauseated.

The betel nut quid is a great tooth destroyer as I can see from the blood-red smiles of most of the guys, faintly reminiscent of those of vampires. The main drag seems to be the chunk of nutmeg inside the quid. The dizzy feeling comes from the tobacco.

None of this seems to deter anyone, though, any more than the awful tasting whisky. Interestingly, they smile approvingly when I am offered a cigarette and decline adding that I do not smoke (“I don’t drink”, in Burmese, can also mean “I don’t smoke”). Smoking is bad for your health.

Beauty of chinone

The field is soaked with water today due to the recent rains. The bare patch of earth is so slippery that players occasionally all of a sudden fall flat on the mud when they rush to hit an incoming ball. Most play barefoot (and with their shirts off too), or just wearing a very tattered pair of sports socks.

It is not good to play without any protection, as there are stones in the ground. A couple of toes show that there are nasty wounds some times. Wounds however are borne stoically. For instance, I have once watched Min, a regular player, keep playing throughout in spite of a fairly bad-looking, bleeding scratch on his shoulder occasioned by a fall.

Watching the game is both entertaining and relaxing (I have watched quite a few games already). I am surprised that there are no fights or quarrels. Ever. Nobody seems to lose their temper either. Where I come from, if people play any games, particularly soccer, tempers can rise very fast.

Players laugh - including at themselves - when they or others make stupid moves. The caneball - it can be made of plastic these days - is pretty light. All the same, if it hits you in the face by accident, at great speed, it can hurt.

Maung Kyaw, one of the regular players, once got a bad wound on his nose ridge that took days to heal. Another risk is literally getting a foot shoved into your face if you get too close to the net at the wrong time (a high kick seems to be quite favoured by some players). I have already seen quite a few near misses, but fortunately never a bad accident.

When the ball is kept in the air, never once falling to the ground, for a couple of minutes on end, everybody seems entranced. This is when the game seems to be at its most beautiful. The keen attention on the part of all onlookers and their silence seem to confirm this impression. The players also clearly concentrate on the game so as not to let the ball touch the ground.

Then someone may kick or hit the ball quickly with his head, and it then makes a beeline for the ground on the opposite side before anybody can reach it. You earn a point for your team that way, but it is simply not a beautiful move. In fact, it almost feels like cheating, especially after the nearly mesmerising sight of the ball going from one side to the other without falling to the ground, though of course it is a perfectly legitimate manoeuvre.

The beauty of the game therefore lies in watching the ball change sides and go from one player to another again and again (every side has the right to touch the ball three times only before sending it back across the net. I am not sure how official this and other rules are).

Some players are very good with their heads, others are better at kicking, and some are adroit at both kicking and butting. You cannot touch the ball with your hands, ever. Of course, a couple of players are better than others. Nobody seems to mind a bad player, however. If your team loses, then it has to make way for another team.

The local entrepreneur

Myo is from Pagan or Bagan, the famous ancient capital of the old Burmese kingdom. It is one of the most visited tourist destinations in Myanmar. He has been here for three years. He is one of the best players and therefore is on the field every single day. As his team often wins, he is seldom on the sidelines. He is, I suspect, the one who started organising chinlone matches.

At any rate, he is the one who always brings a couple of caneballs. He also does a brisk business selling ‘kunya’. In fact, he seems to be the sole provider in the entire neighbourhood, and it is clear that the players are his regular customers. He always brings two different types of betel quid to the grounds, kept in separate, labelled bags in his bicycle basket.

His mouth is always tinged a deep red as he is clearly a betel nut addict himself. He buys the ingredients in Kuala Lumpur and makes the quids - three to one small plastic bag of one ringgit each - at his home. He is self-employed, he tells me. I can see he does good business and not only during matches: I come across him cycling around visiting his various clients at their workplaces in the neighbourhood. In this way, he does not have to venture very far to sell his product.

He knows enough English for us to talk (some of the players speak no English and even no Malay either). He has a wife, who he met and married here. She is not from his hometown, but from Bago, near Yangon, also an ancient royal capital, this time both Mon and Burmese. Had he never come to Malaysia, he would probably never have met a girl from Bago. He plans to stay another three years and then go back home and open a shop. That is the plan or dream of quite a few Myanmar migrant workers I have talked to.

One evening I notice that he has a plastic bag with several small boxes labelled ‘kapur’, namely, lime, a vital ingredient in the making of betel nut quids. He also trades in several Myanmar food items, such as ready-made ingredients for tea-leaf salad (a Myanmar specialty).

I wanted to buy a bag from him but he was out of stock. I will have to wait an entire week to make my tea-leaf salad. I have also seen him twice with a thickish wad of various newspapers in Burmese, all of them incidentally compiled in Kuala Lumpur. He is therefore for all practical purposes running a fairly wide-ranging business out of his bicycle basket and rucksack. It is no doubt the predecessor of his future Bagan shop.

A powerful glue

Meanwhile, he plays chinlone with his friends every single evening. On his team there is always a Rakhine friend, Min, who works at a kopitiam near my home. Myo told me his wife never comes to watch the game. I assume it is not quite proper for a young woman to do so. I therefore doubt I will ever meet his wife except by accident, say, if I come across Myo and her on the street.

The game only stops when it is completely dark or almost (at this time of the year, usually just before eight). All in all, they play for about two hours every evening, though not all of them, and then each one goes back to his home in different neighbourhoods.

Only Myo’s team - of which both Min and another Rakhine friend, Maung Soe, are part of - is likely to be playing throughout or almost. Some players come walking to the field, but many have bicycles, including a very fancy and expensive-looking one. One or two ride on a simple bike. I come on my black, ramshackle, old Malaysia-made grandpa-style bicycle. I love it.

After the game, everybody therefore sets off in different directions. I have noticed that people do not necessarily know each other's names even when they play together. It is therefore not always a crowd of close friends. However, the ambiance is friendly, and there is no tension that I can read as an outsider.

I am almost certain some of the players only meet here and hardly anywhere else. Nonetheless, chinlone seems to be all the same quite a powerful glue among the both players and onlookers. Even I am slowly becoming a devotee, though, just like some in the audience, I never even attempt to play.

At any rate, there are already clearly far too many eager players watching practically on tenterhooks as the game unfolds.

FRED ROSEN has been gallivanting around South-East Asia for quite some time now. He is interested in foreign communities in Malaysia’s large cities. He has also been writing about Malacca, both in the present and the past, as well as other ancient port cities in the Indian Ocean.