The Games We Play

 Mine was a childhood full of invented games. Born to a public sector engineer father, one’s childhood was scattered across sundry townships, often in small towns where finding any pastime was difficult. My brother and I were thus forced to rely on our own ingenuity to come up with games, if one can call them that. I remember dressing up in plastic raincoats and playing Detective, Detective. Or playing Raja-Senapati, where I, by virtue of being older, played the king and my younger brother was the Senapati. Each episode would begin by my asking him, Senapati, Kya Samachar Laye Ho, and quickly dissolve into us battling our invisible enemies with make-believe swords.

Looking back on that time, one is struck by the enormous variety of games we played. There were games that needed no or little equipment and could keep one occupied for hours. Chhupan-Chhupai (hide and seek), Pithoo, Gilli Danda, Oonch-Neech, Stapu. Every region may have used different names for these, but for most, the games would be familiar. And of course, there was the universally loved collective pastime, Antakshari, where it was possible to experience the greatest amount of collective joy with no equipment other than our raucous, out-of-tune voices.

Then we had our versions of popular sports—things we could play at home, alone or with just a few friends. French cricket, which involved using a bat and a ball but had its own set of rules. One-tip-one-hand was another version. There was book cricket, which fascinated me so much that one summer vacation, I played this wholly fictitious version of the game and proceeded to compile detailed statistics of the players involved. Endless hours were spent bouncing balls on rackets, whether TT or tennis. Boredom produced its own repertoire of games as we sought to rescue some pleasure from the blandness of time.

Then there were board games. Ludo (which has had a huge digital revival) and Snakes & Ladders being favourites. Card games also came in all forms—from Patience (what we now know as solitaire)  to Rummy, Kotpees and several more. The carrom board was another addictive pastime, and there were parts of India where the streets were lined by people playing this game with powder-encrusted fingers. And then, of course, there were the more formal sports. Cricket, most often the gully version. Badminton and football being the other commonly played sports.

Things are different today; childhoods are spent on screens rather than on playgrounds, and some of the inventiveness in role-playing and making up games has gone. On the other hand, there is a plethora of digital games to choose from that appeal to people of all ages.

The human need for play seems to be fundamental. In fact, all living beings seem to share this trait. The young of most species seem to revel in this form of horsing around, no pun intended.

Play is vital for our development. It teaches children, without seeming to do so, about different roles and scenarios; it provides a canvas for the expression of one’s imagination; it instills a sense of cause and effect, action and consequence. For the very young, it helps in the development of motor skills, of being able to navigate one’s environment, by providing them with an unstructured set of activities. And of course, it fosters greater comfort in dealing with others—understanding the value of collaboration and reciprocity. We begin to become individuals through the act of play—this is where our personality is truly fleshed out.

In some ways, play represents freedom from authority, particularly that which is exercised by other people. It allows for an exploration of the world that is immediately around us; it is an easy way to test boundaries and to form a relationship with others that is not wrapped up in a protocol of rules. It is a low-stakes way of feeling out ourselves in this world.

There is something that is lost when children stay glued to their screens instead of experiencing the physical world. There is a sense of isolation, of a discomfort with unpredictability when one’s play is always so structured, as it is in the case of video games. It does foster new skills, be they with respect to mental agility, problem-solving, or sheer reflexes. But at a human level, the loss of sociability and distance from nature are perhaps not adequately compensated for.

To better understand the concept of play, it is instructive to look at what is commonly regarded as its opposite—work. While both involve some physical and mental effort and share the trait of having some tasks to be completed, the meaning universes they reside in are dramatically different. Work involves, above all, a subordination of pleasure to a larger objective. One’s personal agency is diminished even when one is working for oneself. There is a sense that the task has to be performed and that the decision to quit is not ours to make. Play is the ultimate sign of individual free will.

As we grow older, play becomes even more precious, as it begins to elude us. We try and keep that window of ourselves open, for we understand the importance of relieving stress and finding ways of unwinding. But all too often, even those activities feel like work. The ‘work hard, party hard’ credo reduces the distance between the two. Even travel very often turns out to be viewed as a task. So often one hears of people needing a holiday immediately after one.

The problem lies perhaps with the degree to which we begin to take ourselves seriously. With age comes responsibility and more signs of our importance. We grow a designation at the end of our name, own assets, and get rewarded socially for showing wisdom and gravitas. We become overly reverential of our own selves. But there is always a little child that lives inside us, that peeps its head out and makes faces at us when given an opportunity.