Gasing, tops or phak kan lock

Gasing: Still available in the market. Unlike places like
Taiwan, it is no longer widely played in Malaysia anymore

IF YOU HAD become a scientist, especially an engineer, you would have encountered angular acceleration, momentum and velocity, and gyroscopic effect, and reminisce about the younger days when we played with tops or gasing. Read here. For the rest of us, it was just a fine game with a rather crude name, if you were Hokkien: Phak kan lock are words, taken singly, have been parts of many vulgarities.

Our games, with all its variations, bore striking similarities with one in India call “bambaram” which was popular until the 1990s. Watch here. A Wikipedia entry describes how the game was played (read here), however, I have edited using the video above as a reference and some recollections of our own experience:

• Drawing a circle: Preceding the game, a small circle about 4ft diameter was drawn on relatively hard ground which allowed tops to spin well.
• Toss, spin and lift to define the first “prisoner”: The game started with a quick competition: On the word “go”, all players would wind their tops, toss and spin them on the ground, before lifting them with the rope and catching them. The last one to complete the process became the “prisoner”. He had to put his top at the centre of circle for others to aim at and hit. There was a trick to winning this competition: Wind the rope as little as possible – even halfway – and do just enough to complete the task.
• Whacking the “prisoner”: The next phase started when players took aim at and tried to hit the “prisoner”. The aims were to (1) break (gunna in Karnataka slang) the top and (2) drive it out.
• More and more “prisoners”: Each time a person took aim and tossed, his top must continue to spin until he was able to lift it to his hands – either with the rope or by easing it from the ground. Anyone who failed became a “prisoner” too.
• Escape: When a “prisoner” top was hit, and it moved outside the circle, it was deemed to have escaped. To qualify as being “outside”, the point of the top must rest outside circle and not touch the line at all.

There were many variations to the game and, many a time, the rules could be changed on the spot by the groups playing.

Parts and the making of a top

The top was made up of the following parts:

• The wooden part, made up of the crown at the top, shoulder and body, was made from meranti or kayu jambu batu. The former, softer and more easily broken, cost about 30 sen each (1960s). The latter, very durable, were double the price or more. Given the smoothness and evenness of the surfaces of the tops, they were made using a lathe. Watch here (a video from Mexico).
• The tip or point was made from a 3-inch iron nail.
• Rope with a button (an aerated water bottle cap, in our case) fixed at one end and knotted at the other.

Skills needed to play the game

• Underhand toss: In this toss, the player jerked his arm outward quickly (like a ten-pin bowler) and released the top. It was considered a bit feminine by the boys – much like underhand serve of volleyball or the underhand bowl of softball.
• Tophand toss: For this, the top was raised above the head, somewhat like what a cricket bowler did, and chucked groundwards in a quick but controlled manner.
• Spin and lift: After a top was spun, a must-have skill was to lift it while it was spinning with the rope placed around it. Most people just caught hold of the top. Some skilful ones, could lift the top and let it continue to spin on the palm.
• Coaxing a spinning top onto the palm: When the top was spinning on the ground, one could coax it onto the palm, and while it still spun, used it to knock other tops.
• Low jingki: There was a move called the jingki in which we tossed-spun the top forward and downward, and pulled it back while it was spinning in the air — and then let it land spinning on our palm.
• High jingki: There was another version which in which we tossed-spun the top forward and upward. Can be seen in the Bambaram video.
• Repairs and maintenance: Our 30-sen investments needed repairs once in a while – like sanding down chipped wood, straightening and replacing the points (nails), etc. After the purchase of a new one, however, we needed to season the wood with oil (usually Singer Sewing Machine oil). This was to prevent it from chipping easily.

Masters of the game

• Top spinning continues to be taken very seriously in Taiwan. View here some of the masters in action.

© Lim Siang Jin