BENGALURU: When the lockdown was imposed in May this year, Soumya Varanasi was a worried woman. Her five-year-old daughter is a ball of energy that doesn’t run out, and she would have to work out ways to keep her occupied at home. Eventually she found that there was no better way than to go back to the games she herself played as a child.
Lockdowns have been a test for parents of young children, she says, and keeping kids engaged doesn’t always require money.
As a kid, Varanasi played Hopscotch, Lock and Key, Help Sister, etc. They could be played individually or in groups (or you could make up your own rules as you went along). Whatever the case, the games were simple and easy to explain to even young children.
“When we were young, these were the games we played when there were power cuts or even generally. These games don’t just keep you fit physically agile, but also mentally active in terms of thinking ahead,” says Varanasi.
Vaanya Chalamcharla, who’s now hooked to the games her mum Varanasi played many years ago, says, “My favourite game is hopscotch because when some of my other friends can’t join us, my best friend Jaanu (Jaanvi Chandrakanth) and I also can play.”
If running about is not possible, or if kids prefer board games, there are lots of options, says Vinay Prashant, co-founder of Studio Tamaala, an art and culture studio in JP Nagar.
Games such as Pagade, Chauka Barah, Chausar, and Aadu Huli Aata, and others, are easily 1,500-2,000 years old and can teach kids to think strategically as they require a lot of assessment to win, he says. You can literally draw up the game on a piece of paper and use seeds or other small articles available at home and start playing. “The games are best explained by grandparents, which could also help them bond with the younger lot,” says Prashant.
Some newer games such as Monopoly (invented in the early 1900s by Elizabeth Magie, an American woman of Scottish descent), and Scrabble (invented by American architect Alfred Mosher Butts who lost his job during the Great Depression) are also popular in several households.
It has become a ritual for Anushka Gadiraju and her friend Saanvi Chandrakanth to play at least one game of Monopoly a day. “It’s like living in a world doing things that I can’t do in real life, buying real estate. I love the game because it is a combination of brain and luck,” says Gadiraju, who studies in class 10.