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"You are IT...!"

© Meenakshi Subramaniam

My childhood summers were spent at my Grandmother's house in the countryside. By countryside, I don't mean the soft, verdant pastures of the English countryside. The tiny village was streaked with fine dust and the only piece of greenery was spread all along the river bank in the shape of huge, majestic trees- banyan, tamarind and clutches of venerable old bamboo. The summers were real, honest-to-goodness Indian summers with a merciless sun beating down on the nut-brown backs of the labourers working in the paddy fields.

As a little girl, I spent most of the scorching days indoors under the red gables of my Grandmother's ancient house. The house was built according to South Indian custom. It was lengthy than broad, which meant if you stood outside the door and looked inside, you could see straight until the backyard. All the doors of the rooms were positioned in a single straight line. My cousins and I used to gather around the cool courtyard after a leisurely breakfast and start our games. Here are some of them- I take as much pleasure in talking about them as in playing them.

"Marappachi"These were the Barbie dolls of our days. But unlike today's Barbie and Ken, which leave nothing to the imagination, our "marappachi" dolls were only rough estimations of the human figure. They were hewn out of red wood, and usually came as a set of male and female dolls. We dressed them up in bits of cloth or tassels and anointed them with sandalwood paste and talcum powder. The "marappachis" withstood rough abuse from our childish hands- they were dumped in the running stream, they were used as handy weapons in our mock battles (and believe me, its not a pleasurable sensation to be walloped on the head with a wooden doll!); but the most wonderful task that we had for the "marapachis" were their wedding. There were then "dressed up" and taken around the courtyard in a boisterous procession.

"Pallankuzhi"This was a board game for two players. The "board" was a wooden affair, which could be folded into two, lengthwise. It was deep and had 12 holes, 6 on each side. Each player took one side and was the owner of her side of 6 holes. Five tamarind seeds or cowrie shells were placed in the holes. The player had to scoop all seeds from the far right hand corner of her "side" and move down the row, dropping one seed in each hole. The hole in which the last seed was dropped was struck one and the process repeated from the next hole onwards. The aim of the game was to collect as many seeds as possible, made more interesting if you could swipe seeds from your opponent's side!