play times

When I was as ol as calvin (calvin n hobbes) , all I could think of was play. Blessed with a school without notebooks and textbooks, my childhood was an endless playtime. I loved to play. Bro and me the eternal playmates. We played stuff from bhatukli (house-house, o whatever u guys called it) to marbles and seven tiles and dabascot (a modified form of hide n seek). The best of them al dhabadhubi. Games that are almost non existent now.

The choice of games would alwes be dictated by the number of people available to play, and the hour of the day. No kid would ever stay at home beyond 5 p.m. goin to frens place to call em to play was an everyday ritual. Then there would be levels amongst them, neighbours, building frens, gully frens, school frens (those ones that would come occasionally to play at ur place). Playtime was the singlemost universally awaited time of the day in the whole of the kiddo community.

When it was my bros turn to select games, we would playing with gi-joes n cars, o sometimes jus running around the house playing “vaghoba” (that was the max scary creature we could come up with, not due to limitations on our imagination, but thinkin of netin beyond that, would inevitably giv both of us nightmares). I don remember dictating the games beyond the occasional demand for bhatukli.

In the evening we would play in the garden below the building. There would be things like game of the week o game of the month, wher we would play the same game til we bored ourselves of it. that zeal, passion, those raised voices, panicky shouts n all that, winning meant so much, no matter if it was hide n seek o marbles. I and my bro were a great team at marbles. We had like a tin full of marbles that we had earned (yeah marbles in those times would be played on lines similar to gambling, and the winner got to keep the marbles. Bro and me had accumulated some 100 o so).

Hide and seek was alwes left for the darker hours of the evening. While its cousin “dabbascot” ( m not sure if it’s the right spelling, that’s the best I could come up with from the way we used to call it) would be spread over wider areas and in brighter light, usually noon time. It was a crude game where the denner stood in a circle and threw a tattered shoe (or a dabba, or anything we could lay our hands on) and the others who would be in hiding, had to replace the shoe back into the circle and yell dabbascot.

But my favorite game was dhabadhubi. The one wher u divide urselves in two teams and throw a ball (could be tennis, rubber o for milder versions paper) to kill (yes we belong to a pro-carnage society) the members of the opposition. it wasn’t an easy game. In the limited area decided decided as a court, u needed much skill to not only evade the ball, but also take charge of it, and aim a target on the move.
The game ended with sour limbs, but well it was worth the fun.

When we grew a lil older, we moved to the 2 Bs bicycles and badminton. While gully cricket was still an all time favorite, Sundays mornings were exclusively dedicated to the game with everyone from the house being involved in the sport.
Carom was mostly played post lunch on Sundays.

In ma village playing took a totally different form, we spent the whole day running around the house, playing on rope swings, flying kites, making bows n arrows, climbing trees, our occasional tries at gilli danda, and yes cricket! (it never left us there either).

Miss those impromptu games that we wud devise, those crazy times when all u needed to have some fun was an accomplice in ur stupidity! Even more miss the mastermind who wud come up with them—ma bro!