Nostalgia for My Childhood Days

If I get an opportunity to relive, I will choose my childhood days.Those times are very sacrosanct. My hey days way back to early 90's when I was in school. Though I had sad school days, I had far more gleeful moments at home.I was brought up in a joint family set-up, so finding companions for playing was far easy. My sister, cousins and neighborhood friends were my playmates and the games that we used to play were so different and unique. We used to play with kitchen set, Barbie dolls and Teddie Bears. But what's different is the way we used to dress up.We will wrap one piece of towel around and put another one like a duppatta to emulate our mothers those who wear Saree. We used to stealthily take salt, water, tamarind etc from the kitchen and try our hands in cooking(?) in our dummy kitchen.

Another interesting game that we used to play is hide and seek.It is not like how rest of the world plays. We used play hide and seek in a low temperature room ,which would have been packed with margarine cardboard boxes (my father was into margarine trading then). Even the staffs in my father's office used to participate in our game. It goes like this. We used to turn off the lights in that room and ask one person to catch others. The rest of us would hide ourselves in between the roof-high margarine boxes and keep shifting our places whenever the person was likely to catch us. The person who was caught should catch others. Interesting indeed?
Another game that we used to play was temple game. Though it was a game, we used to perform it with full faith. We used to use a cardboard as our temple and place godly pictures and photo frames in it. We used to buy flowers, fruits , camphor, fragrances and alike and put kolam ( a traditional drawing that is put by using rice flour).We used to chant religious verses that we had known.Intrigued? There is lot more to come!

Though there are numerous games that we used to play, the most exciting ones are the in-door games. The game of life, Scotland Yard, the game of business and trade, cards, snake and ladder are some of the games that engaged us during our holidays. The best part of the indoor game is even adults used to join us. we also used to play shuttle cock, throw ball and alike once in while.Not to mention the trouble that we used to give to one of our neighbors by putting the ball every time in their terrace and making them to open several locked doors to get our ball back.

Also in our summer games, our best companion was our pet sophia. We used to put a tilak( an impression made in the forehead by using saffron powder) in its forehead and dress it up with a pearl-like chain and alike. Our summer pass times do not stop here. They include homework and assignments from the elders at home as well. Myself, my sister and cousins used to be assigned with hand writing assignments every morning. we had to write three sets of hand writing assignments, viz,English, Tamil , and Hindi. Apart form that we should also memorize and tell arithmetical tables orally. Based on our performances, we would be either awarded with a visit to a movie or hotel or punished by having made to sit in the loft. Nice ride down memory lane indeed!