SHUKHUTI, Georgia — Luka Torotadze, 11, was crouched beside his great-uncle Bitchiko’s grave, wiping dust off a plump, leather ball that rested beneath the headstone. It was a Saturday afternoon, the day before Orthodox Easter, and a few feet away Luka’s cousin, Barbare, and her sisters were helping their mother clean the gravesite of the girls’ father, Vitaly. Their hope was that by the following evening a ball would be resting at Vitaly’s grave, too. The next 24 hours would decide that. Every spring in the village of Shukhuti, in western Georgia, a single black, leather ball is sewn together to play Lelo Burti, a brutally physical folk game — a singular blend of a large-scale rugby match and an even larger street fight — that was once popular all around the region of Guria but is now only played here, once a year, on Orthodox Easter.

Source: New York Times May 07, 2019 04:52 UTC