Games kids play
A total divorce from the immediate environment, is what parents demand from kids

By Meha Mathur
On the day the Olympic heroes where being felicitated in the capital upon their return to India, I was surfing channels. One Hindi channel was covering the event in Oberoi, and simultaneously holding a studio discussion. The studio host posed a question to the correspondent, who was on the felicitation venue. “Aapko nahin lagta hai ki is safalta ke baad chhote shaharon mein bhi in khelon ke prati interest badhega? (Don’t you think that with this success, smaller towns will also get interested in these sports?).”Prompt came the correspondent’s reply: “In khelon ke prati chhote shaharon mein hi rujhaan hai. Bade shaharon ke bachche, Mayur Vihar ke bachche yeh khel nahin khelte, weh doorse games, indoor games khelte hain. (It’s only in small cities that there’s inclination to play these sports. Kids in big cities, say in Mayur Vihar don’t play these sports. They play different sports, like indoor games).”You can’t visualise an akhara for kushti (that is what wrestling is) in the posh Vasant Vihar area or a middle class locality of Mayur Vihar with upwardly mobile families living there. You will find instead a squash court, a pool and a tennis court.

I fully agreed. For, just a day before, my little one, aged eight, had been castigised by a concerned mother of his friend for leading the group into wrong sports. The ‘wrong’ sport happened to be the most joyous games of all, hide and seek, which, I think, all of us have grown up playing. To the anxious mother, this game perhaps is a waste of time and would not lead her kid to a medal. Playing ‘meaningful’ games which can lead the child to a school trophy, a state team, a college admission, and the pinnacle of all things, an Asiad or Olympic medal, is one aspect of this anxiety. The other aspects are the glamour factor, and the hygiene factor.

Lets take glamour first. Of the two bronze medalists, the player who has become the Indian Idol is Vijender Kumar, for his looks and for the more ‘respectable’ game he plays — boxing. The other medalist, Sushil Kumar, is a wrestler, and had to contend himself with one-notch lower adulation. Not for him a flurry of modeling and film offers. This was not just due to his rustic looks, this was also due to the game he plays. After all, what is really the fan following of wrestling. Which metropolitan parent would encourage his child to take up this as a career?

Next, even more important, is the hygiene factor. Sweating, contact with dirt, is a strict no-no. Real players do perspire in tennis or golf, but to an average parent, how clean, how sanitised, and in case of golf, how beautiful does the ambience look. Look at the paraphernalia! A clean court, spic and span toilets for changing, juices brought form home in state-of-the art flasks. You feel exalted watching your child playing thus.

This concern for playing ‘clean’, ‘hygienic’ games means that the hockey sticks which the kids brought dazed by the game in Chak De, now lie unused because no one else allowed their kids to play that game. Within a week I had started getting calls. “Why not encourage the young ones to play cricket or football instead,”other parents asked me. Having grown up, I remember the joy I had playing hide and seek, London, pakadam-pakadai, and if you please, even gulli-danda. None of the games has yielded me a medal, but I still cherish those memories. I wonder what memories will my young one and his friends have.

—The author is the Executive editor of Management Compass and Career Choices