KOCHI: Time flies. It seems like yesterday when children rushed outdoors in hordes whenever it rained and made splashes. In the process, memories too. Today, one hardly sees children outside when it rains. It’s the age of social media. Very soon, there would be hardly anyone left on earth who would remember a life before the internet.
There was a time when conversations ruled a child’s day, when hours were spent reading books, and the outside world offered children the space to play games, invent new ones and, amid all this, forge sweet and lasting friendships. It would be safe to say that now, such conversations are few and far in between, and that soon, one will have to scout the data saved in the “cloud” to pick up on the remnants of such a time.
So let’s walk down the memory lane, to the ’90s or earlier, when the sight of children playing catch, flying kites, climbing trees, rolling in the mud or even standing in knee-deep streams to catch tiny fish using a ‘thorthu’ were common.
“Those were the days,” says entrepreneur Rakhi Jayashankar. She recalls how children bore an infectiously active energy, leading them to play indoor and outdoor games with equal gusto. She remembers a popular indoor game back then. “It involved pebbles,” says Rakhi. “The game would require five pebbles or small stones to be placed on a flat surface, which, in my case, was usually the floor of my verandah,” says Rakhi.
The game has stayed in her memory as one where the player had to be very quick and nimble to emerge as the winner. “To start, one would throw all the pebbles up in the air and then try catching them all on the back of the hand. If the player caught all the pebbles, they could throw them again, and the process would continue.” However, if the player failed to catch all the pebbles, they have to try and pick up the stones while throwing the rest upward, she adds.
The game is as tough as it sounds but has some scientific benefits, adds Rakhi. “It helps in the development of hand-eye coordination and is ideal for students to develop focus,” she says.
Several such games were the staple of those times when life flowed as the hours passed, instead of now when one is rushing through them. Endemic they are to the land, if one could borrow the term and its meaning from ecology. “Many of the games in Kerala were accompanied by songs,” says Ramesh Karinthalakoottam, who has a folk band called Karinthalakoottam and works as the station master at the Kodungallur railway station.
He gives an example. A game where children sit in a circle with their hands on the floor, palms down. The “leader” sings a song, the lines of go as ‘Athala Pithala Thavalachi, Chukkummirikana Choollappa, Mariam Vannu Vilakkuthi, Goonda Mani Sara Kottu’. And the person on whose hand the song ends has to turn their hand up. The game goes on until all the palms, of all the participants, face upwards. When the song in the series ends, the player has to take his or her hand out and hold it at the back. This continues until only one player is left.
“What is interesting is that the game would have different songs in different districts. In some places, the song would go like ‘Akkuthu Ekkuthu Ana Varumbol Kallekuthu Kadumkuthu Cheepuvellom Tharavellom, Sara Makkade Kayyil Oru Bangu’,” Ramesh says.
Sheila Kochouseph, founder of V-Star, also remembers a stock of games that were part of her childhood years. “Boys used to play with green cashew nuts. Then, there was another game of boys played using glass marbles. We girls used to play ‘Kallu Kali’ using pebbles. Then there was one in which all children sat in a circle facing each other. One of us would walk outside the circle holding a bunch of leaves or a branch. That player would place the branch or leaves, very quietly and secretly, behind one of the players and go around the circle. If the player who is sitting fails to notice the branch behind them, the one who placed it will pick it up and tap the player who is sitting down. However, if the person sitting down finds the branch, they will chase the one who placed it there. The latter will only be “safe” if he or she can slide into the place vacated by the former,” she recalls.
Another game that was a favourite among the children and played mostly in the courtyards or the verandah of the houses was the ‘Eerkil Kali’, says Sheena Manoj Oommen, a teacher. “In ‘eerkil kali’, there would be one ‘eerkil’ which was longer than the others. This one was called the rani kolu. This long broomstick was placed on the ground and the shorter ones were tossed. The aim is to get all the short sticks to fall on the bigger one. Once that happened, using a long stick the shorter ones were lifted away without displacing the others. You needed patience for this,” she says.
These regional touches apart, traditional games had a commonality among them, hinting at what could be a pan-Indian patronage. And such games were umpteen. “Hide and Seek, seven tiles, various games using the skipping rope and different variations of hopscotch used to be played by children of all ages across most regions,” says Rajeshree Kotecha, a homemaker. The common games bore a ravishingly regional touch. The ‘Hide and Seek’ was called ‘sat kali’ in Kerala and the one involving a chase to find a thief got a comically hawky twist as ‘kallanum-policeum’.
Lack of playgrounds
The obvious requirement of such games was real spaces, and this brought about a similarity in the games played in both urban and rural spaces – of course, there were some differences. However, things have changed over the years with the advent of mobile phones and virtual spaces overtaking the real ones. Changes in the availability of space, lack of open spaces, etc, have surely contributed to the switch from the real to virtual spaces, but so have educational trends now that leave little or no time for children to go outdoors and play.
Outdoors do exist even now, but in organised set-ups as training sessions for sports such as cricket, football, tennis, swimming, cycling, roller skates, etc. “The flip side is these are games that require investment of several types and hence are out-of-reach for many children. This is unlike before when the games that children played outdoors did not burn a hole in their parents’ pockets,” says Ramesh.
Psychologists speak
The traditional games had sensory-motor stimulation, says Dr C J John, a Kochi-based psychiatrist. “These games have a sensory component that leads to motor stimulation. There was also a socialisation element. These are the things that children today are losing out on,” he says. Unlike in the past, field games like football, basketball, cricket and hockey have become more popular among the Gen Alpha, and this too, only some children play, says John.
As per psychologists, games too come in phases. In the first stage, the child will be engaged in solitary play, then comes the onlooker play, followed by parallel play and finally cooperative play. This used to happen before, ensuring a slow integration of the children into their social ecosystem. “But, the children today continue to be engaged in solitary play. They are not involved in cooperative play,” he says.
Thus, the days now may have many positives, but one of the several good things about the games back then was how they helped children to connect, feel the world outside, and allow nature to work on them holistically. They are also cherished for the fun and the camaraderie. Now, these remain as our go-to memories, as images in a digital repository.
Ittuli Pathuli
Children will sit in a single file all facing one direction. One of the players will then hide a small object nearby. Then the player calls out to the others to find it. If the players come close to the hidden object then the one who had hidden will call out ‘choodu choodu’ (heat). If they are very close, then the player will say ‘kodum choodu’ (high heat) and if the other players move away from the hidden object then the words ‘thanuppu thanuppu’ (cold) will be used. The player who finds the hidden object will get the next chance to hide the object.
Trunk Kali or Seven tiles
This game has seven tiles or flat stones stacked up like a tower. Two teams stand on either side of the tower and try to topple the tiles. Once the tiles topple, the team that fell the tower will then have to build it back up while the other team hinders their efforts by throwing the ball at them. If the ball hits a person, then they are considered out.
