Games then, Gizmos now

Just the other day, I was cleaning up the attic when I found my dog-eared 'Scrabble' game of wordbuilding and my cherished 'Monopoly' game of business and trade . I was delighted and when I started to explain the game to my kids aged seven & six , laughed and cockily sneered and said "what lousy games "!
           I remembered the days when I was of that age and my grandfather gave me a lot of empty medicine cartons and plastic bottles - these things would be transformed into lovely multistoried buildings . The carrom board was part and parcel of every household & in those rainy Sunday afternoons the family of four would be divided into teams & coins pocketed with such ease and I ultimately became the youngest champ at school and in our club.
           The lovely marbles of all sizes and hues , had each one of us boasting the number collected.There was also the typical game for the girls - hopping on different squares on one leg.The Ludo, Snake & ladder and Chinese checkers had its own charm. There was also the occasional card game!
            When my dad bought us a mechanic set, our joy knew no bounds ,for it was the first of its kind we had ever laid our hands on. Playing hide & seek or climbing trees came naturally to us as there ample space around our house!
            Now , the first toys that my kids got from their dad was an yellow car having a small dish like antenna on top , battery operated - the kids at the age of one & two know how to put the positive and negative ends of the terminal !This hitech car started with a clap , reverse automatically and again pause for further commands!
            The first building lessons my boys learnt were not from empty cardboard boxes but from pre-fabricated plastic pieces which can be attached and dismantled to form any size or shape.
             A couple of years down the line,their tiny hands are on the joystick and fingers clicking the mouse of a computer - be it a matching game or shooting down the enemies from a rooftop of a skyrise! The touch screen logical reasoning Q & A game is really mind boggling and technology has reached great heights indeed!
             Apart from the hitech gizmos at hand there are the umpteen number of games like the bowling pins , the mini snooker table , the readymade indoor basketball game which are suited for homes with no space whatsoever! The innumerable video games comprising of  zippy races, soccer, tennis, cricket all give wonderful insight into the nuances of the game which the children pick up at a very tender age but on the flip side- a bad eyesight and couch potato syndrome!
             One can just go on marvelling and drooling over the rapid development of science but Iam  sure a child today is missing the glory of building a sand castle on the lovely beaches - for we wouldn't allow those small clean hands to touch the mud dirtied by paan spits and garbage or climbing a tree , as there is never a tree to climb !!!
                                                                          
                                                                            SUNITA SRIRAM              

OPENING THE FLOODGATES

UNFOLDING A BYGONE ERA ---------------------- Eyes moist,ears tingling,head swimming,voice choking-yes,I am reliving every moment of our glorious past - an era of pure unadulterated fun,of childhood innocence.Bharoo,you have succeeded in opening the flood gates of joy in myriad colours,I quote here a few of a plethora of instances;remember how we were caught redhanded for plucking those delicious "kashuandis",the run to the swimming pool & the tadpole necklace that I was decorated with,the umpteen videos we sneaked at the club's videoparlour-not to forget "khyber pass",how we rolled with laughter always coming back for more,our own tennis classes,the woodstock musical nights,our vanishing trick after cycling head on into a boy of LP school & to scoot from the scene only to get a dressing down from my pitaji! we managed to learn cycling in Bharoo's very own back yard-a piece of land which had more bumps than level ground!our collage days which saw a collection of all our heroes from Sabatini to Azhar!The enactment of the various stories in CJ's class-I just can't forget "The room with a view"-the numerous pairs we created -you guys put me up with Neel for being part of the two member debating club!!! I am leaving you here & you can let loose your imagination till I come back for more...... SUNITA,the evergreen BUFFY

JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG

It took some time to come back from Bharoo's STC PDC days - nowhere in the world will you find those brightly painted red town buses with saintly names to boot! The only black spot in these jaunty rides used to be the typical " Mallufied " males who dig their oily hands in the most awkward places even though we never ventured to wear provocative outfits! To tackle these roadside romeos we equipped ourselves with safety pins and other hitech gadgets which fended them miles away from us.

I'm yet to graduate from school for there's so much to share. I can never forget our physics sir late Mr. Koshy - the moment he enters the class, he would firmly shut the door {which had a small glass window in the corner} and invariably , somebody would peep through it. Within minutes the door flew open and he'd mumble to himself "you stupid blucks of wood " ! I was always a frontbencher not because of my over enthusiasm towards studies, but my eyesight didn't permit me to share that space with anyone else - there would be a shower from Mr. Koshy's mouth whenever he scolded us and it landed right on my face ! To avoid this we girls thought of a plan and came up in a flash with a brilliant "bulb" - we sprinkled some ink on the desk & he got "batik" design on his hand.But this plan widely went off target as this did not deter him from his threats to use the "meter rule" on us!

Imagine,we have even kept those crackling dry rubber tree seeds under the teacher's chair which would give a "pop" sound the moment some honourable Professor sat on it.Our lunch break was well spent collecting those seeds from the nearby rubber tree grove.

The Maths class was a real challenger class - highly fast paced as the first student finishing the problems correctly mind you,would get a chance to solve them on the board - a big morale boost for us in those days.We were already groomed for the rapid fire buzzer rounds in the years to come..... the class of 85 juggernaut will roll on.