Its playtime folks

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” Indeed it does...

I cant imagine what I would have done if I dint have that 40 minutes of “Games” period in school or the 15 minutes of lunch break where id gobble up the food and rush to the overcrowded ground to play.

Hmm... 15 minutes looks like a really short time for food and play... oh my I think I should have enrolled myself in some game show for “ speed eating “ but I’d have fierce competition from all my schoolmates.. we all managed to eat n play in those 15 precious minutes.

In school I enjoyed the games period a lot. Dressed in a smart white skirt (such a relief from the daily checkered gray), I enjoyed playing Kho Kho and badminton and volleyball.

Id wait for the occasional time when couple of us girls will be allowed to be part of the football team with the guys or play rough dodge ball with participation from the boys too.(the girly version would be slow soft balls and with guys it was all about speed and attack!)

Sometime in high school I enrolled myself to be part of the badminton, Kho kho and athletics teams so that I could find a valid reason to shirk away from the “normal” (read sitting and yapping) period majority of the girls liked in my class.

The 15 minute lunch break would only be for running the length of the ground just searching for friends. And when u found people… trrring the bell would sound. Day after day the same exercise was repeated. J Never once did it strike anyone to just wait at a common point after food gobbling ;)

In the evening, I’d wait for the clock to strike 5 to tell my mom I am going to play in the colony.

Never ending sessions of hide n seek would start in the colony, where the thrill of choosing the “den” (seeker) and the searching and then calling out the name of the person you found. Oh the excitement was unimaginable. Specially when u find someone whose name u cant recallJ... (with me muttering every name that I can think of hoping that I guessed the right name against all odds ;) - I can like make an episode of a tele- serial with just those expressions… J

Or a game of Pitthu(where 7 marble stones are lined up like a pyramid and one team rebuilds it while a chaser stops them from doing it) We were supposed to shout Pitthu after reassembling the whole thing :) and I still remember my neighbor shouting “pencil box” in the nail biting finish it was going to get ;) ((Wonder what Pitthu is called in other languages, coz I see people in Chennai playing it too))

I remember the rainy days when we’d play in each others houses some board games or dining “Table Tennis”.

In high school it was going around in the cycle that took up most of my “playtime”

Holidays in Chennai were fun too.. I’d play with the Frisbee and the “ring” (I don’t what its called) at my grandparents place with my cousin. And holidays in Delhi were cycling, more cycling and walking with friends ;)

Slowly I outgrew the fixed playtime I had. It became more of a sneak playtime between works that happened in later years ;)

Like in college, I remember how me n my friend in the pretext of “joint studies” did sessions of “our own game of squash” with a crazy ball and a plain obstruction free and nail free wall in my drawing room ;)(Till my mom figured out that the wall was all dirty because of tiny dots made by the dirty ball!! And banned the game !) And many sessions of book cricket at her place (we replaced the bat with a book!)

And now I’m confined to desk games between studies.. a round on the Rubik’s cube or a little bit of time with the stress ball to soothe my fingers etc etc…

Anything for playtime now ;)