Oh! Those games

 THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: ‘One, two, three,...48, 49 and 50...I am coming...I know where you all are hiding...hey, I saw you! I saw you! SAT, you are caught’. Remember this incident happening at any point of time in your childhood? Yes, you guessed it right, its our own hide-n-seek game that we all used to play once with our cousins and neighbourhood friends during holidays. But does anyone see kids playing kuttiyum kolum, (gilli danda), kabadi or spinning top or kho-kho in the streets now? ‘No’ will be the answer for sure. The new age kids down the block will either be playing cricket, badminton or will be inside their house glued to their playstations playing NFS or MotoGp. Swimming down the memory lane of our own childhood there will be number of games that we still cherish in our hearts but unfortunately they are not even heard of or seen now-a-days. It is evident that many of our native games are losing their significance as we are adopting to the western culture in the name of technology. Lack of time, or the place to play these games also owes to its extinction. “Earlier I think most of the games played involved more physical exercise. Take satoliya (seven stones) for example, lot or running and chasing takes place. It is exciting and at the same time we can breathe and smell in fresh air,” says Neeraj N, network engineer working with Sasken Network Engineering.In the traditional games if there is a vast expanse of free land, then it becomes the field of children to play their favourite games like kho-kho, kite flying, goti (marbles), kabbadi, hopscotch and blind man’s buff. These games brought children from all the classes together on the field as these were so simple and so down-to-earth that even today the mere mention of it reminds us of the good old tension free days. “All our games required the presence of atleast four people, so calling kids from the neighbourhood was usual. Just a howl over the balcony and next we all will be ready in the ground,” says Preeti Menon, an HR professional. “Children were naïve earlier and learned to share things with each other. If somebody gets hurt it will be remain a secret among friends for fear of scoldings from the parents and a ban from the next day’s game,” says Aashish T S, software engineer. Many are also of the opinion that now the children have become self-centric and stubborn due to the lack of this social atmosphere. “Now children will be either playing all the games in the virtual world. And we can see lot of fights between the siblings to share the joystick,” says Neetu Nath, a mother of two boys. Another growing trend that is seen in the city bred children is the appetite for gaming zones inside malls which have games like car and bike race, squash and the like. These games which costs hundreds of bucks for an hour also owes to the ‘I’ and competitive spirit seen in kids now. “Most of the weekends, my kids wait for me to take them to malls. For them it has become a regular. If I do not take them out then our house will be turned into a mad house by them,” says Raju Varghese, project manager. “Earlier even a paper was enough for us to play a game. We used to play cricket with balls made with paper bundle but now kids need a whole kit of cricket equipment to play the game. While thinking about it, I feel our generation was so inventive,” adds Neeraj.