Here’s a clip from last weekends Jor Melaa that happened in Surrey, BC. The atmosphere seems pumping with the Sangat really into the match, creating for what seems to be an amazing atmosphere. What really impressed me with the whole thing was the reffing, which is usually one of the most sensitive areas in such competitions. I liked how the 3 refs around the edges were all active, and working together with everyone seeming to be actively judging the match. Although this doesn’t necessarily eliminate missed calls or objectionable calls it does seem to reduce them, making for what would seem to be fairer matches, albeit longer ones.

The below match match pits, two of the current top Gatka players in North America, Sukhjinder and Teghbir Singh, both students of the late Charnjit Singh, against one another. Both have also participated in past Yudhs with Teghbir being the Yudh champion from 2004 while Sukhjinder impressed the Sangat this year by finishing first in the Kirpaan Demo, and fended of elimination against some of the top competitors, and his match against Jarnail was one for the ages.

Hopefully more videos from Jor Melaa will find there way online, likewise with videos from past Yudhs.

Hopefully we can see the rivalry grow and have a rematch of sorts at the next Yudh; which is slated to happen in the summer of 2007.

Yes the post is a week overdue, but then again what can you do.

Another Yudh has come and gone and things went pretty well, even though  there were a lot of unexpected’s, but like always you gotta just roll with the punch’s and come back as best as you can.

The whole day started a tad late, 2 hours if you want to be specific but then again, that much should be expected. 24 competitors for the over 16 age bracket and I think 16 for the under 16 group, plus those who participated in only kirpaan and damalaa made this the biggest Yudh competitor wise, with over 40 competitors from across North America and technically the World (Singhs from India participated also).

There was even a good Sangat turn out, considering the fact that rain clouds loomed over head all day, and of course Gatka isn’t all that popular or main stream yet, but given some time there’s definite potential for growth.

As far as the match’s the one thing that you need for them to be entertaining is rivalry. What would the Lakers/Kings, WWF/WCW/NWO, Shamrock/Ortiz, be if it wasn’t for the rivalry between them. Like wise in Yudh over the years there has been a build up of a few different rivalries of sorts that in one way or another make us want to come out and watch, in most cases it has to do with the past finalists, while other times it just has to do with similar fighters colliding.

This years major rivalry had to have been Jarnail Singh (Toronto) vs Sukhjinder Singh (Surrey). Of course there’s no love lost between the two, but there’s different reasons why this was the rivalry of the night. Both were students of Bhai Charanjeet Singh, both are quick and athletic, neither is big on defense, and finally ones from Surrey while the others from Toronto. It was this rivalry and the fact that the two met so late in the tournament in an elimination round match that made it in my eyes the match of the night.

The build up

Main reason the two met so late in the night was due to Sukhjinder facing off against Harpreet Singh (California), who happened to be the reigning champion, in the second round. Pulling out the win Harpreet Singh advanced on, while Sukhjinder was left to fight for survival the rest of the night. To his credit though he was able to fend of all competitors that came his way after that, including Harpreet Singh again, and also other elite, such as Gursheel Singh and I think even Ranjit, but then again it was more then a week ago and my memory isn’t all that good to begin with. Either way he [Sukhjinder Singh] put on a show, and was relentless the rest of the tournament.

Jarnail on the other hand came to win. Finishing second 2004 and not ranking in 2005, Jarnail was clearly out to clear his name. Winning all his match’s up until he came across Harbir Singh (Calgary), a new face to the international Gatka scene. Incidentally enough Harbir Singh had just prior (week earlier) competed in a local Gatka Tournament held in Calgary which he also won, so clearly he was the man to beat, other then the fact most of us had never seen or heard of him until the day of.

Anyway’s having had his first loss, Jarnail was sent to the losers bracket to face off against Sukhjinder who you could tell was not ready to let up. The fight started and both of them squared off. Not having the scores let alone remembering them I would have to guess this was the highest scoring match, with both going almost hit for hit, and if either competitor did manage a block, then it was similarly rewarded on the other side. When the match finished, no one could tell who was the clear victor as may have been in the case in most other match’s. When the judges made there decision it came out that they were both tied, sending the match into extra time. Again both competitors didn’t let up, knowing that one of them would be eliminated while the other got to compete in the finals. When the match did end, it was Jarnail Singhs hand that was raised, as he pulled of a win by a mere 2 points, the difference being the one hit Sukhjinder took on his back. Regardless of the result, you know that this is going to be one rivalry to look forward to next year.

The finals

Throughout the tournament, Harbir Singh demonstrated why defense is the best offense. Any Gatka Ustaad will tell you that you should always look for the block first then the strike, and Harbir Singh demonstrated why this works best, being the first second Yudh champion to go undefeated the entire tournament and taking the championship home to Calgary for the first time and doing his part in keeping it out of Toronto, yet again. Likewise in the jr’s it was Harman Singh, younger brother of Harbir Singh, who put the same defense first philosophy to work, beating out all competitors and winning it all for the Jr’s as he beat out favourites, Karandeep Singh (Surrey) and Manroop Singh (Toronto).

Harjot Kaur vs Gagandeep Singh

Although a rivalry solely on the fact that it was girl vs boy, the match was definitely entertaining in that it did go, not only into over time but also into sudden death, at which point it became repetitive sanjhaa vaars, until Gagan was able to get a strike in, winning the match. Apart from that the look of sheer determination on Gagan’s face, not wanting to loose to a Bibi, but coming soooo close to it made this match just that much more fun to watch.

The Flops

Like in all sports you have your picks who just don’t perform. This year I had Ranjit and Jarnail meeting in the finals, but Ranjit fell short in the quarters, which I guess you can’t really call a flop since the competition has grown really stiff in recent years, with competitors such as Harpreet Singh and Parmjit Singh from Cali, and the new found talent in Calgary in addition to other top picks such as Karam Singh (India) all involved, none the less, I expected Ranjit to last and go further then he did. Then you had the Nihang Singh from Harian Velaa who came out and didn’t really impress, winning I think only two match’s. Gursheel Singh last years runner up, didn’t show the tenacity he did last year, but at the same time Jarnail didn’t show fire last year either, so hopefully Gursheel comes out and puts on a better performance next year.Sohan Singh was another disappointment having beat Manroop Singh a week prior in exhibition by a good margin, loosing to Manroop just wasn’t expected, but then again Manroop won when it counted, so good for him.

The Surprises

Harbir Singh and Harman Singh were clearly underdogs coming in, but then again that had more to do with familiarity, those that knew them expected nothing less. Sukhjinder you could say also surprised me, since I didn’t expect him to compete at the level he did.

Overall things went pretty well, it didn’t rain, the competition was fierce and the day went seemingly well. I still think there needs to be changes made with the Reffing and judging, just because the current system doesn’t seem all that fair. For example the Harjot Kaur vs Gagandeep Singh match. What most felt was her striking first was called as a Sanjhaa, which is definitely a controversial call when  you get into a sudden death scenario.

Maybe have the referee there to watch for fouls only and have 5 judges score the bout as the case is in boxing, and then you take the tally of the scores to find the victor. Or do it UFC style, 3 rounds, where the judges score the rounds individually.

If it is kept the way it is then maybe get a rotating ref where you rotate the inside and outside refs every other fight, randomize things a little. Then again the sport and competition is still in its infant stages compared to many other competitions so I’m sure there will be a lot of changes to come over the years and hopefully even more tournaments that improve on things, so to end one can only wait and see.

Lastly a big thank you goes to all the sponsors especially those from Preet Video, and Digitology (Bhagauti Soora), who spent the entire day donating their services in capturing Yudh. To Harpreet of Media Vision for taking care of all the print material, posters flyers everything, Gabroo Punjab De Bhangra team for helping setup and volunteering to help run and manage the event and everyone else who put some time in to make things work. The pictures and videos should be made available shortly on Yudh.net but for now you can check out pictures Gursheel’s flickr account or his blog.  Also a big up goes to Amarinder Singh from Guelph who kept it going all day with the jokes and the commentating, hopefully he comes out again next year, in addition to all the Singhs from California, Calgary, Surrey, Guelph, India, Ottawa, and where ever else, who came all the way to compete and make Yudh an event worth watching.

Yes folks, it’s that time of year again. Yudh is back once more and this year it promises to be a bigger event then the ones before it. Simple reason being more competitors from more places = bigger tournament. This year there’s competitors coming from all over Canada, and the States and even India. I think a big thing is the under 16 competition which made entering possible for those who normally wouldn’t be able to. 

For those who’ve never heard of Yudh before, its the annual North American Gatka competition that takes place in Toronto every year. Fighters compete against each other in a round robin style tourney. Every year Yudh has gotten a little bigger and a lot better so hopefully this year will not be any different.

For more info check out http://www.yudh.net.

Sure, its still months away, but Yudh 2006 is slowly approaching.

Every year Yudh has gotten bigger and better. With an increase in attendance ever year, not only of Sangat that comes out watch and support the event but also with the number of competitors coming from outside of the GTA to compete. Last year probablly featured the most competitors from outside Toronto, with them coming from as far as California, Texas and even B.C.

Sadly enough no one from Toronto has ever won a single Yudh tourney yet, although they always do seem to come close, all years finishing second.

Refereeing and judging has always been an ongoing problem and complaint that most people have had, but being that it’s hard to find an experienced Gatka referee (actually it’s hard to find anyone who’s ever refereed before), it’s understandable that theirs no easy or quick solution, rather to just try someone else next year. Often times, those with experience more often then not get their VISA’s rejected, so you’re stuck with training referee’s a month or two prior to the event, which again results in an amateur referee.

The idea of having multiple referee’s from last year seemed to be a good one, but it didn’t really work in practice. The main things that needs to be changed there are that the outside referees need to be able to make calls and fouls also, rather then just be there to resolve conflicts. Pass the conflict resolution part to the judges. Or even better like boxing or MMA, have a panel of judges who watch for and track the points and make the referee’s soul job to watch for fouls i.e. Sanjha Vaars etc. I think this would not only improve the flow but also result in fairer scoring. The problem that you get when you have only one person tracking score is that it opens the possibility of a bias towards a single opponent.

Also some sort of age/skill cap needs to be placed. I’m all for the Grassroots of Gatka, but there’s nothing that takes away from the legitimacy of the tournament then having players who just don’t belong, well at least not for a year or two. This really hasn’t been a problem yet, although I would debate that players from 2004, may have had more then enough skills to compete, but were just not physically ready to take the hits. And in 2005, Jujhar; do I really have to say more? (Not trying to call you out, but come on now). If anything maybe in the coming years setup separate divisions or pools, grouping people by skill levels, or having a separate thing for 8-12, 12-16, and then 18+ year olds.

The Kirpan demos was a good addition to the tourney as was the Damalla competition, but again maybe have a tourney for separate age groups, that way you don’t got everyone picking the little ones to win, because of how cute they might look.

Although Yudh still isn’t as big as Gatka tourney’s in India, hopefully it’s only a matter of time before you can start doing Akhara tourney’s, where you get the whole Akhara vs Akhara type match’s going rather then just individuals. When you can get 4, 5 Akharay of 4,5 fighters you can then add a Gatka Demo’s challenge awarded to the Akhara with the best demo, but that still seems years ahead of its time.

Anyways that’s enough talking about Yudh until we get closer to the actual event so until then here’s a video of Yudh #1 (2003), that happened in Scarborough.

Until then, peevho dudh jitho yudh!!

Something that’s been bothering me for the last while is the spelling of Holaa Mahallaa, as Holla Mohallaa.

No matter where you look, everyone’s writing it as Mohalla, now I don’t know if I missed something but the proper spelling is Mahallaa/Mahullaa.

Now you can argue that I’m being anal about something that could just be linguistic i.e you say To-mate-o’s I say To-mat-o’s , but lets look beyond that. Regardless of how we say it, we still spell it tomatoes.

The way I assume this whole thing even went of track was, someone read the gurmukhi wrong, and remembered it as Mohalla or similarly someone transliterated it, Mohalla, and it started being pronounced Moe-Hulla, with no one knowing any better or just not caring enough, no one cared to fix it, and then it got re-transliterated back into gurmukhi as ?????, and in this copy paste world that we live in, people just stuck with it.

“Hold on, hold on, what proof do you have that you’re right, and everyone else is wrong?”

Well so far from old pictures and videos I have always seen it written ???? ?????, only on the internet and on various English posters have I ever seen it ever written as Mohalla. But then again don’t take my word for it, check out Mahan Kosh, the Sikh Dictionary, and see for yourselves what is written (more importantly how its written) for the entries on Hollaa Mahulaa (for those of you to lazy to check, yes its entered as ???? ?????) .

It’s such cases as the above that have me hating English transliterations. I’m against teaching or starting people of in reading Bani using transliterated Gutka’s. Part of my cynicism towards it comes from me personally having had started of with transliterated Bani’s. Sure it helps in kind of parroting the language but the way most transliterations are done, they are done at some next academia standard which leaves those trying to learn the language in trouble, since you need to basically first learn the transliterated codes and accents.

It also acts as a barrier when learning to read Bani via Gurmukhi, since many times your tongue gets shaped into reading things or saying things the way it was originally picked up, making it that much harder to relearn the proper pronunciation. But for those adamant about their use of using transliterations of Bani’s, I suggest you do so with tapes of individuals who have good ucharan, and try to mimic their pronunciations.

Anyways back to those evil doers who use Mohalla instead of Mahalla, the one that really irked me to write this post was when I saw it on the COSS website, but their not first or last, just another victim of this copy paste era. Other victims can be spotted using Google.

On the bright side, it’s not all bad. Here are a bunch of those that use it properly

In closing, “Now you know, and knowing is half the battle “ – G.I Joe

Miri Piri Gatka Mix Tape: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8558240270631115782&q=gatka