BENGALURU : Much to the delight of several parents in the city, children are now setting aside the much-maligned gadget screen, and settling instead for traditional indoor games from grandma’s times. However, while playing the traditional games, the young ones often complain about where to play and whom to play with. Mitigating this painpoint, Ima reCreations, a city-based traditional games promoter, conducted a workshop for single player games this weekend at Ragi Kana in Gottigere.
“My son and I would like to play together, and traditional games are the best for that. But I am sometimes busy with work, and my son gets left alone then. He only has television or mobile phone to keep him company at such times,” Meena Subramanyam, mother of 13-year-old Sidhanth Arya, said. “But today, I got to know that there are a lot of traditional single player games, which help improve children’s concentration and memory,” Subramanyam adde.
Ima reCreations was set up by Immaculate Antony, a former technology professional, four years ago to promote traditional games in the city. “In this workshop, we introduced Tower of Brahma, a logical thinking game which has been played since 2400 BC, besides other games such as alukuzhi mane, pallankuzhi in single player mode and ball mazes,” Antony said, explaining that these are mainly single player games that can be played by anyone across age groups.
Describing the rising popularity of these games in the city, she added, “There has been an increase in the number of people and families adopting these games. One major trend that we are seeing nowadays is corporate firms, including Volvo Group, Mphasis and TaeguTec India, coming forward to conduct sessions on traditional games during their family meet-ups and personality development or training workshops. That’s because they find that these games are different from usual activities and help in the improvement of team work and efficiency among employees.”
The growth story is also echoed by Sreeranjani GS, the founder Kavade, another player in the field. “There has been a steady increase in the interest towards traditional games. I have been trying to revive these games for 10 years now. Even in the corporate sector, we have many partners who call us for sessions regularly,” Sreeranjani told CE.
Antony calls it a sort of social movement, urging people to take it forward with more participation. “We source these traditional game boards from Mandya and Channapatna,” she said. “We really need more players to join this field to promote these manufacturers.”