“The greatest
invention in the world is the mind of a child.”- Thomas Edison
While lunching at a relative’s
birthday party a calendar with pictures of children playing ‘childhood games’ on
Indian soil caught my eyes yesterday. The music which flooded the dining room
transported me to a phase when Ma tried her best to lull me to sleep for an
afternoon nap (mainly on Sundays/ holidays) but I would sneak out to play with
my friends from the neighbourhood.
Nearly a decade back while on a trip
to Chamba-Bharmour in Himachal Pradesh to escape what becomes a gas-chamber
during Delhi’s sizzling summers, I saw youngsters tobogganing. What laughter
each apple-red cheeks radiated! While ascending the curvy, nearly-steep climb
as I panted, I couldn’t wait to pause a moment to see the boys tobogganing
downhill with a blast of laughter in unison. Back home the younger version of
me clad in a cotton frock would sit on coconut fronds while one of my pals
would be happy to play the role of a pilot navigating me through the by-lanes
inside the campus, with the condition that after some pulling she would sit on
the much-prized ‘throne’.
This year the organisation where I am currently
working held a 2-days team-building activity near a river’s confluence in Ukiam
on the Assam-Meghalaya border. The pre-monsoon rain had not swollen the rivers
and there was knee-deep water in most parts of the river. After trying the
different outdoor adventure activities, my attention diverted to a group of
young village boys who were playing the game of seven-stones right in the
middle of the river. We played with lawn-tennis balls with randomly picked 7
flat stones which we collected from the road. The two groups, equally divided,
has to target and topple the seven stones, each piled one after the other,
something which resembles the place Baralach-la if you have travelled to Ladakh
on the Manali-Leh highway. (Travellers stack stones offering prayers for their
onward journey through the treacherous terrain). Even when the ball fell in the
drain (the drains where much cleaner then), we picked it up, dipped it (at
times only but not always) near the small pool of water next to my house and
once again continued with the game. You see, hand-sanitizer came in much later
and we perhaps became stronger by playing physical games and thereby building
in strong resistance for our body.
Seasonal fruits are to be eaten and
are only to be avoided when a virus is on an attacking mode. I much relish the
sweet-juicy litchi (lechu in
Assamese). Deota peeled-off the head of a match-stick and inserted the pointed
end of it on the half-cut lechu seed
and we happily spinned it as another lechu
disappeared inside our cavernous mouth with the calcium-coated stalactite and
stalagmite of teeth extracting the sweet flavour. We could make simple toys to
play out of seeds we ate that has been replaced with the metallic
fidget-spinner students are commonly seen spinning nowadays.
Tyre- Did you ever get tired of
playing with tyres (or anything round/ cylindrical)? We derived as much pleasure
by inflating air in the cycle tubes with the hand-pumps as by deflating air
from unwanted trespasser’s motorised vehicles intruding our ‘game-space’. Our
group also readily agreed to lend a helping hand to any stranger whose car’s engine
failed and whose vehicle needed just one push to kick it live.
Kite-flying is yet another game which people
cutting across all age groups enjoy. We now have kite-flying festivals organised
by Jeevan held in our city. I have seen how Delhites esp. on Independence Day
colour the sky with kites of different colours and sizes. On any other day each
kite flier tries to cut kites flown by others by smearing the string with manja, a practice banned now as it snaps
off or damages electrical wires and poses a threat to avian life.
And who has not collected marble and
played with it in their childhood? The metamorphic rocks chiselled in perfect
round shape can easily fill a child’s hands, front pockets and mind with metamorphic
happiness by how much he or she has collected and the count in the jar. Playing
with marbles is generally considered to be a boy’s game in India but our gang
had this share of fun too.
Every girl- village, town,
city or elsewhere is familiar with kut-kut
(hop-scotch in English). Learning of geometry came in
much later in school. In the absence of the white chalk, we drew boxes in
paired squares and rectangles with broken pieces of brick which we usually
found on the roadside and by flinging a stone inside the boxes we had to hop on
one leg without touching the lines.
Panch-guti (knucklebones) was also a game which girls generally played with
small stones. With the panch-guti- 5 stones inside our right fist we had to slightly throw
the 5 stones in the air as swiftly as possible and turn the right palm facing
the ground and then carefully let the flying 5 stones settle on our fingers. There
were different rounds for the game of panch-guti, a few involving both the
hands simultaneously.
We also experimented on
developing communication lines by building something which somewhat resembled
Alexande Graham Bell’s invention- the telephone. Though in no way it looked
like the dialled landline telephone of yesteryears, we were at least able to hear
the sound which was carried through the thread and with containers attached at both
ends. Reuse and recycle we did even then to make devices with which we greeted
each other ‘Hello, hello’ followed by long, loud laughter.
People of my age will
surely agree that back then Guwahati was far greener and we had lots of vacant
land on which children could play. Greenery also meant that we had more
hideouts for the game of hide-and-seek. God! We never fell sick while playing
this game even when it rained. If outside it was hide-and-seek, it was
blind-man inside invariably in a dark room in which a child’s eyes was covered
with a gamusa and the blind-man had
to find his/ her missing mates in the cover of darkness.
As a child I didn’t quite like
to eat curd but I thoroughly enjoyed tekeli-bhanga
khel (sans the curd). I surmise, the game of breaking the empty earthen pot
by a blind-fold man holding a stick and marching all the way in search of the
pot (minus the treasure) must have emanated from Lord Krishna’s days. You have
to sniff your way out to locate that pot in order to win.
Padum-phool, literally meaning lotus, is not
just a flower which grows on water. It was a game too in Assam in my growing up
years. It could be a dead game now. 2/3 players were enough in which a pair
would sit down on the ground facing each other. The duo had to try different
hands and legs posture while the third one had to jump, over and above, and
cross the duo, with no body part of the jumper touching the sitting-pair.
Otherwise, she was declared out. Talk about flowers and it reminds me of yet
another childhood game- Aai Re Amar Tagor.
I may have forgotten the rules of this game but I remember the last few lines
“ . . . Juwa bhonti juwa goi, chira-pitha khuwa goi.”
Assam is a land-locked
state. We may not enjoy a maritime climate like children in coastal areas do
but we have good weather to play. Coastal location reminds me of sand and sands
in turn reminds me of castles- sand castles. I can vouch on the fact that we
all have sun-soaked our hands once in life with sand for building castles. Not
all of us can be an architect in life but no harm if a child architect builds
one out of sand, with the township complete with neat roads, row of trees and a
place of worship at the summit of a miniature hillock.
Tug-of-war: The rope in the front line (as in a battle
front) instead of being placed in between two warring parties is instead placed
parallel to the two teams as they face each other and each member clings to the
rope as tightly as possible in order to win. Life is like a game of tug-of-war.
It must be best played with true sportsmanship. Likewise, “Love is like a
tug-of-war. It’s hard to hold on. But it’s harder to let go.”
Musical chairs and passing
the parcel exclusively came under birthday or picnic games. The sound of
clanging simple kitchen utensils like a steel bowl and a steel spoon was for
passing the parcel. Indoor games which dominated was Ludo ( Latin for ‘I play’).
My elder brother always cheated when he realised that he had little chance of
winning on Ludo. Once or twice I remember playing a Manipur indoor game with
cowrie shells, thanks to my next-door neighbour Sinha aunty whose sons were my
elder brother’s friends. During winters we made a badminton court in the
children’s park near my house and connected the court with electrical wires to
bring in electricity from home so that we could play even after the sun set at around
5 p.m.
In those days a doctor’s
chamber was few and far between, in sharp contrast to today’s world. So what
did we do when there was an injury while playing? “Suck your own blood if the
blood oozes out in trickles”, I heard someone from my friends circle say. We
may die if we do it now. Blame it on our too toxic and polluted blood. It is
strange considering at that point of life when we were academically at the
lower rungs of the ladder we knew which plant’s crushed leaves or juice to
apply on the fresh wound, something which evades my memory at early 40s. If the blood gushed out, then the injured
player headed straight home. Parents, neighbours, relatives would take us to
the dispensary. Only the real sick rushed to hospitals then while the not-so-sick
visited the local dispensaries.
Play
your game well. “Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have ,
and only you can determine how it will be spent.”- Carl Sandburg