Games - innovations

A friend's post on "Nostalgic Games" post made me nostalgic and you know what happens when I become nostalgic – a blog post comes up. Of course, how I can resist, that too after Deepak asking me what all games I played. But, I do not have enough time to explain/translate the numerous games I played. So, I will just list down the small innovations/derivations we (me, my bro and my friends) made to keep us alive and going whenever we felt boring.

1. Loans and pawn broking (hypothecation) in Trade/Monopoly: We started playing Trade/Business/Monopoly as early as at 8. Slowly, we were bored. Then we introduced loan concept. A player can hypothecate his city (or bungalow/godown) with the bank – should pay an interest of 50/100 for every round until he can pay back. And, the loaned amount is used to buy new sites. See, we were good real investors at that time. Of course, genes of a banker father helped. But, I am not a good investor now :-(

2. Share Business: We were bored of Trade by 12. Then, we conceptualized the share business. Instead of cities, the monopoly board would have Company names. Players can own a company or buy a share of the ownership. You get dividend similar to the rents for the sites. Having a type-writer at home meant we printed our own currency and Share certificates. Now, I am trying hard to balance my demat account portfolio.

3. Shooting range: Inspired by watching 1988 Olympics in Doordarsan, at the age of 8, we set up our own shooting competition with plastic bulleted guns bought in local carnival (exhibition).

4. Archery: Most of the kids might have made bow-arrows stealing sticks from broom and then having a war (inspired from DD Ramayan). We did that too, got bored and went a step ahead and conducted archery competition similar to shooting (again inspired by Olympics).

5. Thermocol bats and squash/TT: What would you do with those left-over thermocol (polystyrene) sheets after you were finished with your school projects? We carved small TT-size bats (rackets) out of thermocol and conducted squash tournaments in the drawing room and table-tennis on the dining table.

6. Tennis with exam-pads: Exam-pads are the ubiquitous ready-to-use bats/rackets to play cricket or any ball-game, especially in school. We even played shuttle-badminton with the pads. But, the tennis game with exam-pad and rubber ball tops the list – yeah, we followed proper tennis scoring of games and sets.

7. Golf: Having new cable TV connection and StarSports for the first time meant we watched almost all sports on it, including the boring golf. Inspired by it, we played golf (mainly putting and clubbing) at home - digging holes in the backyard and using sticks as the drives.

8. Basketball with mug as basket: Once, we wanted to play basket-ball inside home. Hang two mugs to opposite-facing windows, use a plastic ball – we were ready to play basket-ball :-)

9. Cricket with duster(wiper)-chacks : In Engineering, none would carry exam-pad. We tried with books, but they were heavy. So, we played cricket with chalks and duster. That too, while classes were going on in the adjacent rooms.

10. Timeless test: Bored of regular 10 or 15-over matches, we started playing 2-innings unlimited over cricket matches with all rules including innings lead and follow-on.

If these innovations were needed after we got bored with the below games, one can understand how much we enjoyed our childhood. Thanks to never pressurising parents (for education), I (and my bro) had a wondeful childhood   Even getting cable TV in my seventh standard did not stop us.

Repeating the games I mentioned as comment on Deepak’s post:- Nela-banda, Udum (Hide&Seek), Veeri-veeri gummadipandu veeri peremi, Help, Current-Shock, Ice-boy, Ice-Press, Color-color, Enimidi-rallu aata, Tokkudu Billa (3-4 varieties), Kundullu, 2 variations of London, Steps game, Mukku-gilludu aata, Show (Played with chits), Ramudu-Seetha, Accham-gillalu, Chinta pikkalata, Edu penkulata, Uru-peru-cinima-vastuvu, Karrata, Bechalu, Goleelu (marbles), Trade/Monopoly, Vaikhuntapali & Snakes&Ladder, Ludo, Ashta Chemma (2-3 varieties), Gudu-gudu gunjam, Cat-ball, Card games like WWF, cricket stats, Archery, Shooting, paper-fans, Donga-police with self-manufactured paper guns, Dadi, Puli-meka, the number games, all kinds of Sand games, playing Kings&Wars.

The above were in addition to the usual Cricket (one-step, two-step, tennis, tape-ball, cork-ball, double wicket, test matches- unlimited overs, ), Chess, Carroms (game,rupees-paise, business, puli-meka), Kabaddi, Shuttle Badminton, kho-kho, flying kites, video games (Mario, tetris) and computer games.

Games played (conducted) at school - like lemon&spoon, three-leg race, gunny-bag race, Ram-Ravan, memory game, etc