No Barbies in Berhampur

We lived in a world sans Leo toys and Barbie dolls. A world when video-game parlors had not mushroomed in street corners, when Play-stations had not invaded our households, when TV's did not encroach the privacy of our bedrooms, when a solitary proud radio with huge round knobs adorned the drawing room. …. How did we live in this world? How did we engage ourselves after our homework?

Time then to press the rewind button.

The first toys, I recollect, were made of tin. Be it cars or trains they used to be activated with keys that had big ears. There was this tin soldier with a Pinnochio type nose who would beat the drums much to my glee. The monkey had two flat saucer shaped tin discs in his hands that would go chan chan chan chan when he would start clapping after being keyed up.

I fondly remember this monkey because on occasions when I would cry non stop after getting badly hurt, it used to be keyed up and I used to burst out laughing, much to the relief of the elders. After a spoonful of sugar mixed with Horlicks, I would be ready once again to take on the world.

All these toys had a very short life and in those days, middle-class budgets did not allow us the luxury of frequent replacements.

Girls used to buy plastic guddas and gudiyaas packed in transparent polythene sheets. The hi-fi ones had blue eyes that would roll up and down. “Yeh japaani gudiya hai”, the owner would proudly announce. When girls used to fight it would culminate in one of them saying, “Theek hai mein teri gudiyaa ki shaadi mein nahin atee.”

We also had a large collection of miniature rubber animals which used to come free with the packet of Binaca toothpaste that we used to buy every month from the grocery store at Bahapur market. This probably was as close we could get to our Discovery channel.

There were also a plethora of wooden toys. The more innovative and artistically endowed would buy puppets with strings attached and make them dance to hindi film tunes. I remember having a gudda and guddiyaa made of wood that would keep nodding their heads when touched delicately. At times when the wind would blow strongly or the fan would be at a high these dolls would start rolling their heads! The dolls day out would come with guddi parva, the annual toy festival when all the household toys would be artistically displayed.

Outdoor low cost innovative games were very much in vogue during the sixties. Rolling the cycle tyre after giving it a whack with a small stick was definitely one of my childhood favourites. Running after it and balancing it with the stick while simultaneously giving it the desired direction, used to be such great fun! Somehow parents never approved of it. I was repeatedly told that it was a bit of a let down watching a Convent educated boy displaying such poor taste. Needless to say the cycle tyre got a premature burial- a martyr to the middle class notions about what is good and what is bad.

Marbles were a great passion in our childhood days. It used to be called “baatee” in Oriya. They were generally white in colour with a couple of orange, red or green stripes running around the middle. We used to dig three small holes equidistant to each other in a straight line. And the game would start with a lot of competitive gusto. Hitting the opponents marble called for a lot of skill and precise finger work. The cute glass marbles came later. So jealously were they guarded that I used to sleep with them in my pockets!

The colourful Top or Lattoo was also great fun once you mastered the slightly difficult art of playing it. We first had to buy those colourful wooden tops of the right size and perfect balance. Then we had to go to a small black-smith shop in the by-lanes of Bijipur who had the expertise in making different types of iron tips for the latto. Some boys had developed awesome skills. They even had the expertise of spinning it straight on to their palms and then gradually transfer it to their finger tips! Unfortunately, after a few seasons, news reached the elders that somewhere some kid had lost his eye playing this game while one had died because of a wound from the rusted nail. So the tops too stopped spinning in our house and spiraled out our lives.

Then there was a game we invented on our own from empty cigarette packs. And what colourful packets we had during those days! Red and White, Scissors, Passing Show, Berkley’s, Canvenders, Four Squares, Capstan, Charminar, Panama… the list seems endless. My favourite packet was Passing Show. On the packet was printed the photograph of a smoking man wearing a dark hat. Its punch line probably was, “You can smile as you smoke.” Empty packets belonging to three or four players would be placed under a heap of loose soil inside a small square marked on the ground. Then with especially polished square tiles or flat stones you had to hit them out of the square and the packets would be all yours.

Ludo was a family must. On one side was the snakes and ladders while on the other side used to be the more traditional game of coming out of your square with a throw of six and then proceeding to complete a circle before getting into the safety of your home. I distinctly remember how Bata used to lure us by offering free ludo with Sandak- the brown coloured water-proof footwear! The ludo used to be printed on the inside of the cardboard box in which the sandak was packed.

With age we gradually grew out of them. Finally cricket and Table-Tennis remained my only passions. Flashes of childhood cigarette packet game or the game of marbles would come for a jiffy when you hit the stumps and appealed for the run-out and team mates would shout, “bachpan mein kanche bahut khela hai.” But childhood, once its slips through can never come back!

Today, when I look back I realize that one can have a complete childhood, full of interesting and innovative games, with or without costly toys.

No matter which way you look, way back in the sixties, we were “playboys” all right!