Family Games

There are quite a few advantages of growing up in a big family, and I am not talking about just joint families (this concept is anyway diminishing rapidly in urban India), but in large nuclear families. I know because I have grown up in one - with four siblings & quite enthusiastic parents, we always had a lot of group activities to engage in at home for which we didn't even need participation from anyone else apart from the family.

One of these activities that I remember most fondly was - playing games during weekends or summer vacations. Our favorites were Chinese Checkers (or was it Chequers? It doesn't matter), Scrabble, Carrom, Cards, Badminton, Table Tennis and so on. Chinese Checkers was so addictive that even while sitting at dinner table, we used to mentally picture how to move something from point A to point B by jumping over glasses, bowls etc .. oh, it was so hilarious. And then playing Scrabble made us all make a mental note of each new word we came across that had a Q or Z or M or W (they have higher points in the game than most of the vowels :) ). And cards (especially 29) used to be more a war than a game as my parents were so good at it that we used to get scared being there partners and making some bad judgement.

It has been years since we played any of these games .. mainly because all of us have moved out of home one after the other and occasions when all of us get together at the same time have been few and far between. So when my parents visited me & my sister for a month recently, we did get a chance to play some of the games from our growing up years - mainly Scrabble and cards. We definitely have become quite rusty at Scrabble but in cards we now play more mature (??) games - like Flash and we all (me more so than anyone else) are making quite a few bucks (to the tune of about fifty at the last count, but it's absolutely priceless! ;) ) in the process.