© 2002 Vidya Sigamany

Recently my husband was asked to prepare some themed board games as part of an advertising project for a client, a major holiday resorts company. The idea was that it should be an indoor game to be played by a family of four, a father, mother and two children, presumably to get them interested in a new game which reinforced the resort's brand name in the customer's minds. As my husband and I discussed possibilities, it became an exercise in revisiting the different kinds of games we had enjoyed in our childhood.

One of the clearest memories I have is of an old, tattered, green double-sided board we had at home, with Ludo on one side and Snakes and Ladders on the other. This board gave me (and my parents, cousins, neighbourhood friends) much pleasure in those TV-less hot summer childhood holidays, which no doubt accounted for its tattered state. Another pleasant memory is of being introduced to pallaanguzhi, a native Tamil game, played on a wooden board with hollows, using cowries or dried tamarind seeds, again during one summer vacation by a classmate who was from the nearby village. Wonder where that green board is, and what happened to that classmate.

Of course, indoor games made up just a fraction of the time we spent playing. When we lived in neighbourhoods where there were big groups of kids of my age, I have taken part in outdoor games, though my dislike of any kind of physical harm to myself kept me out of many such games. But I remember one glorious summer week when a neighbour persuaded me to join her brother and his friends to play gilli-danda. I don't exactly remember the nuances of the game except that it involved specially cut and sharpened little sticks, but I do recall spending most of my waking time enjoying the (then) fabulous game. But somehow I seem to recollect that it was a short-lived pastime - I probably got out (of the game!) as soon as things got rough!

Then there was the enormously popular Hide and Seek (is there anybody who has played it and hasn't enjoyed it?). This brings up another summer vacation recollection - playing with a big group of friends, which included the maidservant's sons, in a huge cotton warehouse down the street which we had just discovered was deserted (doesn't that sound just yummy?) - until one day we were discovered playing there by the caretaker or somebody and chased away! Oh, but what fun we had for the few days that we did get to play there. It was ideal for hiding (God help the Seeker - hey, I know where J.K. Rowling got that word from! - his job was not unlike capturing the elusive Snitch) because it was new territory for all of us so we kept 'inventing' new hiding places, it was a vast area, there were bales of cotton in sacks piled high on which we climbed and hid ourselves. In fact, I remember that I never got out!

Hide and Seek also provided some riotous enjoyment when a few cousins and I spent some weeks at my Uncle's house in Calicut. Four of us female cousins heartlessly cheated my poor little male cousin. The rules of the game excluded the thickly wooded area behind the house, but we girls would get him to be the Seeker and run and hide precisely in that wooded area, laughing silently watching him run around the house, climb up to the terrace, comb the insides of the house, run around the house and all over again! So he would go on being the Seeker till he called off the game disgusted. Of course, he never guessed and believed in our story of a "secret hiding place." He doesn't know till this day and I am writing this only in the belief that he is not reading this!

I don't recall playing little girls' stuff much. I did have a favourite plastic doll, a gift from I don't remember who. I used to carry it around but don't remember it playing much of a role in my life! Once a few of us girls got together, stole some rice, lit a fire and cooked it in a small clay pot - all in a house under construction!

On a related note, have you noticed how kids these days have their whole rooms filled with toys of all hues and variety? And a computer thrown in too. Would they know any of the games I have talked about?