Wired fun: Simple games have been forsaken for the hi-tech world of Nintendo

A sprawling house, innumerable spooky corners and a dozen cousins of all shapes and sizes — my grandmother’s house was the perfect setting for playing hide-and-seek. We would race through the house, the wind running through our hair. The memory of the exhilaration leaves me feeling breathless even now.

Cut to today. The house has been brought down and replaced by a block of flats. The cousins have grown up and have a brood of their own. The hide-and-seek has been replaced by Nintendo where, with hand on the consoles and eyes on the screens, the children chase and kill imaginary enemies.

Marbles, gulli danda, etc, are too pedestrian and frowned upon by the adults; ludo, carom, kho kho, kabaddi, hide-and-seek need numbers which are hard to come by in nuclear families. In such a scenario the rise of video games and TV as a third parent does not come as a surprise.

Recalls Rakshita Singh, a homemaker who spent her childhood in a joint family, “Often there were two people on each side for a ludo game. ” She remembers many games of make believe. “One day, we were fire-fighters, the next day pirates, the Famous Five (although who played Timothy the dog was always the issue) and sundry other characters. Now my children complain that they are ‘bored’ despite their array of computer games and other toys — something unheard of in our times.”

The times, of course, have changed. For one, the advent of computers has significantly altered the character of a child’s play. Says Prof. Anand Kumar, professor of sociology at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, “The rise of entertainment centered on the information technology revolution is another layer added to children’s play. Moreover, the nuclear families and the loss of neighbourhood friends means the loss of playmates who live close by.”

Not surprisingly, individualised games are getting more and more popular. The increasing use of mobiles among children too can be seen in the context of the need to stay in touch with friends.

And money too plays a role in the kind of recreation children indulge in. Pokemon, a multi-billion dollar industry, where a “new” deck of cards is released time and again, was a craze till some months ago. Swapping Pokemon cards to get the complete set of 150 characters with shifting categories of species, weaknesses and grades might not seem any different from an earlier generation's swapping of football or cigarette cards.

“The difference lies in the cost and the practice of making some cards unavailable in any of the standard products,” Rahul Singh, a garments exporter, says wryly.

“When my friend gets new toys I too want to have them. Otherwise I feel left out. But my father does not always give in to my demands,” complains 12-year-old Raja Sharma.

Explains Kumar, “There is an unhealthy trend in the rise of children as consumers, which attacks their innocence. It is as if no one is a child anymore. They are all young adults.” He argues that while people at large are unhappy about child labour, they ignore the issue of child consumers. Experts are concerned that an artificial need and greed is being nurtured among children.

As a result there are the ebbs and and waves. Krissh masks, Superman and Harry Potter paraphernalia were the rage when the respective movies were released but they now lie gathering dust. “Stuff like Pokemon are passé. We play duel mastercards and fight with Transformers Cybertron (robot-like dolls),” says Raghav Mehra, a Class V student from Vanasthali in East Delhi.

Says Swati Srivastava, a housewife in Noida on the capital’s outskits, with a grimace, “Even to play musical chairs, they need supervision from the play facilitators at McDonalds.” And no one plays for the fun of it but for the prize waiting at the end which cannot be just a bar of chocolate but something more substantial.

Not everybody believes there is reason for alarm. Says Dr Sanjay Chugh, founder chairman, International Institute of Mental Health (IIMH) and International Institute for Deaddiction Research and Therapy (IIDRT), Delhi, “The need to win has existed in any and every game/play activity. What is more important is how this phenomenon is explained to the child.”

But parents complain that peer pressure is at work in bringing about some of the changes. “To use my nine-year-old daughter’s language, it is not cool to head to grandma’s for the holidays. We are urged to go to different places — preferably not in India — or she would not be considered part of the hip set,” says Aparna Rathore, who works in a Gurgaon-based multinational company.

Dr Chugh avers, “If computers and Pokeman had been available some 15 years ago, there is no reason kids would not have played with them then. Recreation is the primary reason games are played. These help children in building up team spirit and educate them about the group dynamics essential for the development of a healthy functioning personality. The new games reflect a shift in the availability and accessibility of resources.”

But since the West dictates and the East follows, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Kumar points out that cycling, swimming and such outdoor games are making a comeback in the West. “They have been through the entire gamut of games which were aggressively marketed and now there is a return to the old. Children are not just automatons. They use their discretionary powers.”

Amen to that!