GAMES LOST

• The games we played when we were children have disappeared into the mists of the ever-plodding time.
• During summer, we would step out at 8 a.m. and return home only at 9 p.m., of course darting in and out to sneak a snack. Cricket was the perennial favourite, but once we played baseball, with casuarina sticks and tennis ball.
• A range of games like gilli danda, marbles, top, seven stones, kabaddi, kings, apart from badminton, kept our spirits alive and our adrenaline flowing. That it shot up the blood pressure of people who watched us was not our concern. All the screaming, swearing, cursing was done while running at full tilt. I wish I could do that now to shed some extra (large) fat.
• We had a set of indoor games, like trade, cards, chess and carromboard. These were quieter and our parents loved us _ if we played at somebody else's house. Hide and seek would take us to places where lesser mortals would fear to tread. Riding a hired cycle during summer vacation became an obsession, with a scene of us taking a tough curve appearing and re-appearing in our dreams.
• When I look out now, I see not many boys playing. Most of them are in front of the computer, moving a mouse, wearing spectacles at a very young age and showing flab. The first sign of extra flesh on me appeared when I got a job.
• I don't want to sound like a pessimist, but can a computer provide the music that the ball makes when we strike a ball; the smack of a ball landing into save hands, the sweat, the wounds on our knees and hands, the joy of running and falling and a thousand other feelings that my mind has lost as years gobble up years.