Lakdi ki kaati, kaati pe ghoda…

“Dip-dip-dip my blue ship, sailing in the water like a cup and saucer, dip-dip-dip. Sammy!!! Your turn. Dehi is dip”

In 5 seconds, they’d spread out like bees sprinting away from an insecticide, and I’d begin chasing Dehi. It took me several weeks to notice the subtle differences between the twins Dehi and Avi. Till then, most of our recess, I’d run after who I thought was Dehi. More often than not when I dipped her, she’d say ‘Get a pair of glasses or something, I’m Avi!’

Many such memories whizzed through my head during my three hour class yesterday. The whole thought began with my professor humming limericks, leading the class to talk about games for children inside and outside the classroom. This was just enough for my brain to break out into a dum-doorak-doorak-nam-nam-nam dance and prance its way into memory lane.

Yea, those were the best days of my life, when the world was not yet infected by x-box, playstation and their cousins. When we lived in Apartment # 2, I hardly had any building mates for company. So my earliest playmates included, a swing (yes I spoke to non living things about my day), a neighbor’s parrot, and cleaner named Raman. When they were busy, I exhausted my time playing teacher-teacher where I pinched and poked the leaves with a toothpick, slapped the pots, and almost exterminated amma’s beautiful botanical collection; and kitchen-kitchen for which my props were appa’s scratch papers cut and colored into all sorts of vegetables, toffees and chips.

Then we moved to Lima House, which housed 30 apartments, with mostly desi residents. Most of the houses had on average two children, with girls outnumbering boys. As soon as our parents thought it was cool enough (45 deg celcius) to let us out, we would dart out like caged birds. Hide-n-seek, chor sipahi, hopscotch were all popular games that need no explanation. Hopscotch has always be my favorite game, one that I still play with ittie-bittie girls!

School games differed from building games. In school we’d finish our snacks 5 minutes prior to the recess bell. At the stroke of the bell we’d dash out of the classroom to lay a hand on the nearest wall. Hence beginning twenty minutes of touching-the-wall, where one person had the task of catching someone while they were running and weren’t (duh!) touching a wall. Other classroom games included pen fight, which had several people grounded for weeks for spoiling parker pens, and antakshari, which would invariably break into a boy vs girls fight. Chinese whisper was one that was as popular as Altaf Raja ke gaane!

Other games included London statue in which all and sundry froze and the denner tried to make them move without touching them. Over time we invented a harder version, Bombay statue where we had to constantly move a body part, clap our hands, blink without stopping, and the denner’s job was to make them stop for a brief period of time to exclude them from the game. The there was the sit-stand game where the denner commanded the others to sit or stand, in no particular order, and whoever did the opposite got out of the game.

After every exam my friends and I religiously met in one person’s house. It felt as if we had done a great task of attending a week full of exams and hence had to celebrate the hard work before we got grounded with out grades. The menu, location would quickly get decided, often meaning the moms had a tedious task of preparing a nine course meal to satisfy us, and the building residents had to pull out their ear plugs for a day. For since the time we set into someone’s house, till the time we left, we played catching in the dark. We’ve had many accidents while playing this game, including a broken bunk bed!

As much as I’d love to go on with this post, I need to step out for a meeting. Waiting to hear your versions through your comments. Ciao until the next post