Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Aaah... games from my past!

Just when I looked at a 10-in-1 board game set that we recently brought, (oh, I so wanted to type "I" and fell into the "we" culture! Am growing old, ain't I?) I was reminded of how the games from my past have moulded me! Let's leave the all famous Chess, Carrom, Snake and Ladder, Trade (yes, totally Indian!) and other indoor games passed on generations after generations.. let's leave all outdoor games those were a different "ball game" altogether! Am just nostalgic about a whole different set of "lunch time games" that made me learn!

School days and break times have been the most useful, fruitful and entertainingly educative hours of my life! I learnt from people, from games, from chattering and from everything inside the campus that I hold on to till date...

When I talk about these that were played with paper and pencil (or the rough note book that used to be an additional baggage in the school bag!), I now find them online, on phone apps, as board games and all around! Still fun, but misses the "group" component that made them more fun!

Recent finds online include:
1) "Name, Place, Animal, Things!" - Man, I still remember not knowing any other animal but for "Donkey" and the extinct "Dodo" for the letter "D"!!! (There are different cumbersive and boring online versions that stand no match to friends approving and disapproving of fictious names, places, animals and things!)

2) "BINGO!" - No, not "Housie", not "Tambola"! They come with cards someone else designed! Of all the designing skills that went into drafting one's own 5x5 matrix and the sheer joy of screaming "BINGO", no other version beats the fun in this. Me as a kid would not leave a single parchment (yes, even the tiniest piece I used to find in hotel rooms) free of drawing the Bingo matrix, even in the remotest of places we would have travelled to!

3) For those who call this game by this name alone - "Chi, Koo, (Li), Baa!" - Again, not Stone, Paper, Scissors! It used to be Chi, Koo, Baa mania at school, at home, at every place we go! We played at every possible break/ between class periods at school, had a tournament among cousins, taught my Dad to play it with his social circle (and he eventually did play!). It was madness! Wonder how people sit in front of a computer screen and play the online version!!!

4) "Memory" - or that's what we used to call, or guess nobody really bothered about what it was called and it was just played! The typical "I went to the market and bought apples", "I went to the market and bought apples and oranges", "I went to the market and bought apples, oranges and bananas", ........ - This can never be justified in any other form!

5) "Hangman" - I still play it on my mobile, but it was much more fun to draw a hangman step by step rather than watch the app draw one when u suck!!!

These were probably the top five that struck my mind. There were few others that were fillers and few others that just din't mean so much to me to remember after years :) But these above meant a childhood!!!

Hail paper! Hail Pencil! Hail "Rough Notebook"! and Hail "Lunch Breaks!" that I now miss...