Playtime!

As children everywhere have done through the years, my friends and I spent almost all our waking hours in playing as I have told earlier elsewhere.

In those days toys were something that only babies had. This was in those days before plastic was widely available. Almost all the toys were made of wood or other organic material. Imported toys made of plastic were available then but only if you had relatives abroad or knew someone who would sell these imported items. So children had to improvise playthings with what was available in the house or backyard. As this had been done through ages some 'toys' were handed down from generation to generation, like the 'marapachi'-the wooden doll.

Small babies were given 'kilukiluppai' (Rattle) made of dried palm leaves with some pebbles or big seeds inside. It would also have a handle made of a stick with thin strips of palm leaves. We can rattle it to produce a sound which would grab the attention of crying babies. They were made to sleep in 'Thottil' or Yenai,( as cloth cradle is called in our side) made of old 'veshti' or saree (as new cloth would not be soft). It is basically a cloth hammock hung from the ceiling from the rafters or a hook. (Rather than the flat baby cot, Yenai gives the babies a secure feeling as the sides gives a light pressure on the babies' bodies. My grandmother used to say that it would shape the heads of the babies into a rounded form unlike the flat backs of the babies made to sleep on a flat surface.)

Colourful toys would be hung from the cross bar of the Yenai which babies could see when they woke up. Otherwise small babies were not given any toys. Mostly they were cuddled and crooned over by one or the other member of the household, usually a large joint family and were not left alone for long. Teething rings were unheard of. Small children would be admonished not to touch the babies. I remember how we would steal a peak and enjoy the thrill of the babies grabbing our fingers to bite with their toothless gums. We never thought about hygiene and germs and maybe this was how the babies developed immunity! When they were toddlers they were given a walk-cart made of wood (Nadai Vandi) with which they could practice walking. Older kids would be gifted with a Rocking Horse made of wood. Girls would be gifted with 'Choppu' set of tiny wooden kitchen vessels for playing house. These would be sold near the temple or in temple festivals in a carton of palm leaves.

By now a smaller kid would have arrived on the scene and the older kids would have been shooed off from the 'Yenai' being told that the baby would have body-ache if the Yenai is used by older kids! Our grandparents would provide us with swings made of a small plank and coir rope hung from the mango trees in the backyard (as car tires were not widely available then).

When we were 3-5 years old we were neither babies small enough for rattles etc., nor old enough to join the young boys and girls playing active games outside. We would only play inside the house or the backyard. Mostly we were left to our own devices. Somehow all the games we played in our grandparents' house using 'playthings' we made ouselves stand out in my memory rather than the games we played in our parents' house with the real toys they bought for us!

We girls would play house with enthusiasm with whatever ‘choppu’ was left over from last year’s gift and would just pilfer small vessels from the kitchen to supplement them. We would demarcate the walls with chalk pieces and play house. In the summer vacation we would make 'proper houses' with mats and bedsheets to make tiny walls and roof and would enjoy sitting in the sweltering 'house'! We would polish coconut shells and use them too. For milk we would break the ‘kaattamanakku’ plant (Jatropha plant) which would bleed white milk-like substance which would serve as ‘milk’ in our ‘house’. We would use sand as rice and finely powdered red brick mixed with water as the ‘samabar’. We would use the leaves of the wildly growing ‘athi’ plant as serving leaf instead of the banana leaf used in a real house.

We would invite the small boys to have ‘meals’ in our ‘house’ and they would come home from their ‘shop keeping’. As boys found it demeaning to ‘cook’ they would play the role of breadwinners keeping ‘shop’. They would sell the sand ‘rice’, brick powder, ‘jatropha ‘milk’ and ‘keerai’-some small wild plant.

Boys would improvise their own playthings with the palm fruits serving as the wheels for a pull cart. We could make small hand held fans (kaathadi) with palm leaves. For the fan to rotate fast we needed fine needle like sticks. We would roam around the locality in search of the wild thorny trees (karuvela maram) which provided us with the perfect axis for our little ‘fans’. We would hold them and run fast which would make the fans rotate fast too. If it was a windy day we could just hold them and admire the fast rotation.

We would make home made kites for the windy days, with newspapers and sticks of coconut leaves , ‘borrowed’ from the brooms in the kitchen. Our mothers would yell at us on seeing the loosened brooms. We always wondered how they found out that we had taken out some sticks! Most of the times the 'kites' would not take off at all as they would be too heavy with all the cooked rice we had used as gum to stick the sticks and paper!

We would make paper boats out of newspapers and note papers and float them in the huge vessels used for storing water in the courtyard.We would make 'music' out of 'pipes' made of broad leaves rolled into marrow pipes. Or we would just blow on the petals of rose and any flower broad enough to cover our lips which noise never failed to annoy the grown ups! We would play 'drums' out of brass plates and metal ladles.

Any empty powder tin or any discarded candy or biscuit tins made of metal were precious and were hoarded through the year. We would even make tiny 'toys' out of the glittering wrapper of the boiled sweets sold as chocolates in those days, especially 'Parry's' and would line up our 'house' with tiny figures of 'dancing girls' made of these wrappers.

Sometimes older teenage girls would decide to play house with us too, leaving their grown up games. Then they would bring real rice, dal and jaggery and we would build a real fire between three stones. Using these and a real pot we would make ‘koottanchoru’ which tasted heavenly just because we had cooked it ourselves!