Nostalgia-my golden childhood

This post was triggered by my recent discussion with my friend Vishnu, we were talking about our childhood days and various games we used to play as kids back home in India. He is from Parabhani and I am from Pune. I feel our generation is unique which has seen a huge shift in lifestyle, we did not get shocked after seeing television sets or refrigerators or radio. We knew about them, but all these were rare possessions, very expensive. They were prestige symbols like the BMW or Mercedes of today. We did not have any game consoles or video games and whatever games came were very primitive compared to games we get today but we had a plethora of games to choose from. I don't know who invented them or from where they came, and their names used to be different depending on geographical locations but one thing was common they all were extremely entertaining and made our childhood special. Yes, the lack of landline phones, cell phones, cable TV, video games, amusement or theme parks, and many things without which today's kids can't imagine their lives made our childhood extremely special. It is difficult to believe but I am sure many people from my generation will agree to this. 

So, the question today's kids will ask is without all these 'essential' tools of self-entertainment and time pass how did we as kids entertain ourselves and pass our time? The beauty is we never got any spare time in hand where we had to think about how to pass or kill the time. We never complained to our parents that we were feeling bored and didn't know what to do. Rather, a lack of time was the problem. We never had enough time in hand to finish our last Gilli-Danda (or Vitti-Dandu in Marathi, many consider this game as the origin of cricket), our last cricket innings, or our game of marbles, and many other things. Parents literally used to drag us home from the ground to send us to school or feed us our dinner or lunch, so busy was our childhood. Unbelievable. And that too without all any of these fancy things.

What can I say about those games that we used to play, I don't think I can do justice in describing the amount of fun, excitement, and entertainment they brought into our lives. In my neighborhood, very few families can afford to buy toys for their kids, and if they buy, the moment other kids see it, it used to become public property. But toys were never generally bought, they were created by kids. Girls were not obsessed with Barbies or any other commercial dolls, they used to make their own dolls from household items, and many of those dolls used to get married in a mini-marriage ceremony (in UP they call the marriage of Guddi and Gudda). We used to pluck fruits from trees to eat them and steal them if required (mangoes, tamarind, Awala, Jamun, Peru, and many more). Our creativity used to be at its peak during all those adventures. Many of our games like Kabaddi, Gilli-Danda (require just two sticks, one big and one small), Lagori (needs just a softball and pile of stones), Langadi (where you try to catch a bunch of players while hopping on one leg), game of marbles (only requirement is bunch of marbles which were dam cheap), Bhawara (spinning top), required minimum or no (as in case of Langadi) tools to play them. Then there is a cricket..obsession in India. We never used to watch cricket as much as we used to play (nowadays the equation is reversed). Those tense gully cricket matches, intense fights to win 25 paise match (Indian quarter, less than a penny in US currency), that tension, drama, excitement, those fights over run-out decisions (every run-out decision used to be controversial), tremendous sense of achievement after winning the match or frustration after losing it. All those incidents are part of our memories. I am sure everyone from my generation has many stories like this.

As I said our generation is unique, we saw technology taking a huge leap. The technological revolution also happened during our parents and grandparents' generation when TV, radio, and telephone were invented, and man landed on the moon. However, none of these discoveries became part of normal households because of so many reasons, mainly because those things were very expensive and were not marketed so aggressively. People lived their lives as if these inventions didn't exist or thought they were luxury items only made for the rich and elite. Sugary soft drinks were there in the market during our childhood but we used to get them only on very special occasions they were not substitutes for drinking water. Chocolates, toffees, and lolly pops all were there and we used to eat them whenever we got the chance (I am sure people remember Eclairs) but they never became a reason for health problems. 


My generation saw technology slowly entering our lives and then taking control of our lives altogether, The refrigerator came and it substituted an earthen pot which was used to cool water during summer days (I am sure people will agree with me that water from that pot used to taste much better). Water heaters substituted old water heating systems. CD or MP3 payers substituted tape recorders. DVD's removed VCR and video tapes. Computers, cell phones, video games, the internet, and so many things entered our lives and substituted one thing or the other. One can debate if it was for better or worse, but our generation embraced many of these things with open hearts. We all used many of them for the first time, our generation was the first to play video games, the first to use cell phones, satellite TV, or cable TV, and many more things. Most of them have enriched our lives and made us better, and more comfortable. I am not complaining about them but at the same time, they kicked out many things from our lives. Sometimes when I look back, I miss some of these old things. I know my kids will never understand why I miss them, what was so special in those games, what was fun in stealing fruits from neighbors' trees, these things look so primitive in front of today's video games. Those games make your hands dirty, and there was a safety hazard in some of them, we never used any precautions while playing cricket or Gilli-Danda, but still, they all are special. I will play them with my kids to show them how much fun one can get out of it. I am not dwelling unnecessarily in the past, I know these games will soon be part of history and one can only find them in some history books, but they will stay with me forever, they are part of me.


Thanks for reading and please share your views.

References:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilli-danda

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagori
3. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/now-officially-a-sport-langdi-takes-giant-leap/562024/

(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)