The friends' gaming zone
These magical events occurred in the sixties and the seventies in my home village in Sri Lanka.
Once upon a time, if I were ever feeling bored, I’d shout out across my fence to my neighbour and good pal, Linton, getting his attention. While chit-chatting with Linton, we leaned over and shouted to Lal, Linton’s neighbour on the opposite side. Not satisfied with the three-way chatter, long-distance, across three properties, Linton and Lal crossed over the fence markers to my garden. The three of us, now face to face, got into a rapid exchange of news, what we had been up to since our last meeting less than 24 hours ago.
My parent's home was on a large property with many open spaces. It had a huge garden, wide and long. It was the gathering space of choice for the neighbourhood young out to enjoy a sunny afternoon. Lightly erected fences let kids slide through easily between properties, bypassing the narrow gravel street.
Our loud, boyhood noises attracted more neighbouring kids. Merrill and Elmo, Linton’s first cousins across the street, joined us. Suddenly, we had a small team of young kids ready to play and hang out.
More chatter continued. Justin, Linton’s elder brother, now joined the group. Justin was the eldest among the boys’ group. He was the big brother, many years older than the rest of us. Everyone respected him, calling him ayya, meaning elder brother in the local language. Justin ayya was resourceful and skilled in many crafts. He made his kites by sticking colourful papers, bamboo, and gum together. He made catapults out of wood and their slings from discarded tyre tubes from bicycles. Justin caught fish from the nearby waterways in the paddy field using homemade fishing rods.
My friends rarely wore a top; the boys were bare-chested and wore colourful cotton shorts stitched by their doting mamas. That was the only way village boys could beat the 30-degree summer heat every day of the year in sunny and tropical Sri Lanka.
Nobody asked permission to pluck one was hungry. In our garden were guava and naminan trees with ripened fruits on hand reach. When the boys felt like it, they plucked the fruits and ate them on the spot. Washing fruits was unheard of back in the day. For drinks, boys walked up to our open well, pulled a bucket of fresh water and drank the cleanest water one could ever drink off the metal bucket.
Among my garden's many s were colourful butterflies and dragonflies. Justin caught a dragonfly from the garden and tied a light string to its tail controlling its flight. After a short while, he carefully released the thread from the dragonfly, returning it to its freedom. Coloured butterflies flew everywhere, sucking my mother’s garden’s flowers.
Among the plentiful green grass that grew naturally were large hordes of small and large grasshoppers. Lal caught a grasshopper and put it in a glass bottle. Boys gathered around, admiring the trapped grasshopper. After getting tired of admiring and watching its plight, Lal released it back to the wild.
Jayanthi, Pearly and Kanthi, our friend Lal’s elder sisters, joined us. The three sisters loved playing a game of Batta, a unisex hopscotch game played with one leg. It was a popular game among the girls.
Susan, who lived on the left of our house, joined us to play. Susan and Linton were first cousins. Susan was great at enacting role plays. She pretended to be a Catholic priest and celebrated mass. Enacting mass rituals with everyone, she involved Linton and me as altar servers. She gave us small pieces of bread, and everyone pretended to receive communion, a Catholic ritual. When election campaigning was on, she pretended to be a politician and enacted a fiery speech, imitating local politicians of the day.
Linton ran home, creeping under the fence and bringing a marbled jar. Everybody assembled on our wide footpath, filled with white sands. The marble game started. With his accurate shooting, Linton ended up winning the most marbles at the end of the game.
Then everybody decided to walk up to Ashley’s large garden, three properties away, creeping under the joint fences. Ashley’s grandfather, John and my maternal grandmother were first cousins. Ashley and his siblings, Ranji, Leena, and Ashley’s cousin, Jude, joined the kids’ group. Their large garden was full of fruit trees, and their produce was freely available to us. We ate Mauritius plums fruits until our teeth got discoloured with a stained yellow. In their front yard was a large breadfruit tree with a swing. We took turns swinging ourselves, hoping to reach the sky with every move up in the air.
In John’s backyard was a huge cashew tree. We hurled sticks plucking pear-shaped cashew fruits, red and yellow coloured, fresh from the tree. When we successfully hit our targets, everybody rushed to devour them, then and there, under the tree. Behind John’s kitchen was a bilin tree, which produced green fruits with a limey flavour. Our stomachs were full from all of the fresh tropical fruits freely available.
The group now inflated to about fifteen boys and girls, and negotiations commenced on what games we could play. We had many choices: football, cricket, marbles, hide and seek, or Elle, the local indigenous game.
Every gaming instrument was homemade except the universal tennis ball for ball games. The bat for Elle was a bamboo stick, about a meter long. The cricket bats were made of raw wood; wickets were made of discarded sticks. The markers were thrown away coconut husks. Every sporting tool was improvised from local, easily available eco-friendly materials that cost nothing. They were green to the core.
We played until it started getting dark for sundown. Passing the gravel street was my father on foot, having finished his work. On seeing him, I pulled out of the games, bidding farewell to my neighbourhood friends, promising to join them the next day. I ran to my father and walked by his side, proudly carrying his leather work bag. I returned home happily with him.
A bit later, as my father was scrubbing my playground dirt off my body with soap at our open well, I could hear mothers from our neighbourhood calling out for their children to return home from playing. It was time to pack up.
Not everything about the young kids was rainbows and sunshine. But the best thing was how easy it was to socialise. No formal plans; just shout over the fence or turn up at their front doors, which were always open for neighbourhood kids. It sounds like an imagination of a children’s cartoon, but these magical events occurred in the sixties and seventies in my home village in Sri Lanka.
Over a half-century later, in 2021, I admit what was done to the dragonflies and grasshoppers was wrong. But we did not know any better back then.
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