It was a lazy evening and I was sitting by the window and
just gazing into empty space when I saw a few kids chasing some old bicycle tyres
with some rough dried up twigs. There is a house being constructed near my
place and these kids were from there. They were a boisterous lot, aged between
6-9 years, running around, grinning away to glory, totally involved in their
tyre chasing game looking so carefree with not a worry on their head. I
couldn’t help but smile looking at them.
I was then taken down memory lane. I was so
reminded of my childhood days when I used to be more on the road than at home!
Me along with the neighbors’ kids used to be on the road and in the ground in
front of our house playing all kinds of games. There used to be a whole gamut
of games that we kids used to be involved in, ranging from the very age old “kunte bille” to the more noisy “gulli cricket”. I remember very vividly
how we all used to go- “am I right?” in our kunte
bille game in the air plane shaped boundary! And there were the other games
of Lock and Key and Chain cut where we used to run helter
skelter trying our level best not to get out! And there were the much noisier
games of “lagori” and “choor chand”! Boy, were we a boisterous
lot while playing these games! There was also the game of “kanna mucche”(hide and seek) for which we used to explore our
surroundings fully to find good hiding spots so as to ensure that we don’t get
caught by the person who was out! The games like kunte bille were considered to be the girly ones and the boys quite
naturally abstained from playing these games. Lagori and Choor chand were
more of the uni sex games which all of us- boys and girls used to play together.
And there was the more boyish game of “bugari”(
spinning top)that more often than not only the guys used to play with such
colorful tops! And slowly as time progressed, we started playing with frisby
(more commonly called as “disk” back then) and tennecoit (more commonly known
as “ring”) but our favorite was the very popular game of badminton! How much we
used to fight for our turns! And there was of course my favorite game of gulli cricket! I and a few other “girl”
friends soo used to mix with the boys (much to our mothers’ dismay) and be on
the street playing the game, jumping compounds, getting into gutters to find
the ball, breaking the window glasses of many houses, throughout competing with
the boys, trying to show them and prove it that we could play as well as them!
And occasionally, say like once a year, we all used to go out flying kites,
making all of it ourselves- colorful with long long tails!
And for the rainy days, we used
to resort to the indoor games of “bara
katta” (local version of ludo), “Kalla
police”or Snakes and Ladders. As we moved to higher classes, we used to
play the game of “Name, place, animal, thing” and slowly, we had also started
playing the more sophisticated games of Carom, Chess and Scrabble.
Man, those were the days! Just
the memory of it all brings a big smile on to my face!
But I don’t think kids today are
even familiar with most of these games! Carom, chess, badminton and cricket,
they all are. But not to the other games.
I have a lot of kids in my relative circle and also see a lot of kids in
my neighborhood but see none of them playing the games that we grew up playing!
A few of them, play cricket but many others would rather play the virtual game
of cricket! Most of them seem to be soo glued to mobiles, X Boxes and Ipads
that they can’t let go off them and turn all restless and cranky when they have
to stop playing their Temple runs and Angry Birds. Today, it’s all virtual!
They play Snake and ladder, Tic ta toe, football and a lot of other games on
mobiles rather than playing it with other kids. And there is a plethora of
games that the internet is offering today that the kids would rather play them
and beat their counterparts online than play them in person! I don’t know if it
would be right to blame the kids. They are just trying to hold their ground and
ensure that they stay ahead of their counterparts who are, a little too
competitive and precocious for their age.
I suppose this, is the generation
gap that people talk about. But this aspect of the Generation gap is what I
find disturbing to accept as I somehow feel this has an adverse influence on
kids and their innocence. Technology has
surely brought about a lot of changes, but this is one change that might have
more cons than pros as we shall go on to see in the years to come. Can
something be done now? Can this be changed? Or should this be changed at all? Should
we just wait and watch time unfold more and more of such changes? Who has an
answer for these?
I guess the sooner we come to
terms with reality, the better it is! One can’t really complain or do much
about the changing rules of the Universal game played by time!! Or can we?
