When I was younger, my sister and I loved playing snakes and ladders. I think we both believed that we were somehow responsible for sending each other down the snakes, or for victoriously climbing a ladder. Now, of course, I know that we were totally at the mercy of the randomness of the dice. We had no real influence over our own successes or failures.
I had also assumed that this game was a western creation – but my recent travels in India revealed that it has different origins, and an unexpected spiritual aspect. According to one interpretation it was used as a tool for teaching about the quest for liberation from the vicissitudes of karma and the hindrances of passion. Kindness to others is rewarded by a ladder. Drunkenness by a snake. The winning square represents moksha – freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth. Others have seen it as a representation of destiny – the notion that the course of your life is beyond your control, with good and ill fortune determined by impersonal forces.
