Kuch Bhooli Bisri Yaadein

As a 7 year old, my favourite game was to 'catch butterflies'. The colony we lived in (which deserves a separate blog, i must say, for all that i am today is attributed to the tiny township tucked away in north karnataka. More on that soon), was pretty green and my brother and i most happily ventured into the tall patches of grass that grew next to our beautiful staff quarter (JSQ 21/1, 7th cross road), and looked for tiny wild grey coloured butterflies. Most often than not, my brother managed to catch the poor creatures. What i was good at was, trapping them in a wooden box, and 'feeding' them with 'grass'. Not that I did all this in complete innocence, I knew the entire 'game' had a wicked feel to it. Guess that gave me the pleasure. Ma discovered us doing this once, and threatened us that she'd do the same to us, if we didn't think up of something better to play.

Soon I graduated to playing only with the 'girls'. Fortunately or unfortunately i never had dolls to play with - except for a boy doll that would cry when the pacifier was pulled out of its mouth. I was of course not allowed to touch it (that's something that really perplexed me as a kid- why have toys when u cant play with them?). I didn't have too many girl friends except for a few - there was chulbul, veena, deepa and sowmya. The later three were my class mates and didnt really like chulbul. Chulbul was the wildest of the lot, a senior, and quite quarrelsome. She always wanted to play chor police, where she'd be the police and i'd be the chor, and she beat me up mercilessly! So i decided i'd stop going over to her place. So my classmates would land up at my place and we would start looking for triangular shaped stones. we would gather these stones and arrange them size wise, against a tree. and play, guess what? God-God! We'd decorate the stones with flowers (mostly bougainvillea flowers), add a mud 'tika' and distribute sugar as 'prasad'.

I so loved playing all those games: four corners (again a very girly game), lagorie, cheena paani (catch), stop, chain kho. I wasn't particularly fond of indoor games, i had to be out on the streets, barefeet, to enjoy anything.

I now look at my 2 year old daughter and see a lot of me in her. She is pretty imaginative in the games she plays. I saw her yesterday talking to two pillows about her barbie, and the big pink ball she has. Wonder what she said to them, and what those pillows made of it. Whatever it is, i only hope she doesn't get anywhere close to doing what her mom did- trap butterflies in a wooden box , just for fun.