As a child,
do you remember what you did when you really, really wanted to play? Did you
try just about everything to convince your mother to let you go? Didn’t it seem
like our job, a compulsion, to go out and play? Once I remember on a bright,
sunny afternoon, my Ma refused to let me go outside. She insisted I take a nap
and rest. So I just waited till she dozed off. Then, risking the huge row that
happened later, I put a pillow underneath her hand and leaped out. Don’t ask
the rest. It got ugly!
When I read
Anita Desai’s ‘Games at Twilight,’ I was already a teenager. But while reading
it, a forgotten era seemed to come back into my mind’s eye. Things that had
happened years ago, when giving the ‘den,’ was the worst thing that could
happen in a day. Or when a rain shower could ruin a much anticipated evening to
the extent that tears would relentlessly pour. Or when catching a friend
cheating at a game would unravel passions and tempers, baulked at the
injustice. Or when a sudden power cut in the summers would bring a smile,
because it meant extra playing time outside. It seemed a lifetime ago that I
cared for all those things. Where did that child go? She got lost in career
building and board exams. But Anita Desai and her bunch of kids woke up that
child in me.
The story
begins on a hot summer afternoon, when a bunch of children, happy to be finally
released outside their house, decide to play hide-and-seek. As Raghu is “it,”
(the den), all the other children scramble to find a suitable hiding place.
Ravi, the central character, after much deliberation hides himself in a spooky
shed, believing he will never be found and would thus win the game “in a circle
of older, bigger, luckier children.” But after he emerges, hours later, he
realizes that nobody has remembered him and he collapses with “a terrible sense
of his insignificance” while the other children chant,
“The grass is green,
The rose is
red;
Remember
me
When I am dead, dead, dead, dead . . .”
This story
is one of the best descriptions of childhood, another one being Harper Lee’s
“To Kill a Mocking Bird.” But this story being Indian, definitely hits the
right nerve. The group dynamics Desai portrays is a good psychological study,
where there is a “motherly Mira,” who actually bosses the younger children and
the footballer, Raghu, who scares and bullies the rest. Most of all, when I
read Desai’s mean description of Indian summer, her choice of scrumptious words
brought back to mind the many summer afternoons that I had braved with my gang
of friends. And then later, her description of twilight is once more so
realistic; the relief when the sun bids farewell for the day and a time when
the children’s “games would become legitimate.”
This
reminds me of this one time, when after a thousand pleadings, my mother let me
out on a particularly hot day. I found a bright, turquoise blue egg in the
grass. Thinking it was a plastic toy I tried to bounce it on a rock. It
smashed, splashing yellow, slimy yolk all over my arm. I immediately knew I was
in trouble. I ran home in bawling. Of course, it was a snake’s egg. My mother
refused to touch me and made the driver bathe me in Dettol. It was quite some
time after I could ask to be let out again.
The child
that I was can never come back. Too much worldliness has filled my head. I have
forgotten why I had such a yearning for playing outside. That period of
innocence is gone, but “Games at Twilight,” will never let me forget that “business
of the children’s day which is—play." If you haven't read this fantastic story spend a few minutes and read it here.
We only see
a little bit of the real David Beckham. And that’s never enough, is it?
However, Meyers keeps the heat up pretty well! Anupam Kher floors us too with
his usual super-Dad acting. I love the way Gurinder Chadha gently pokes fun at
both Indian and British cultures as the girls bend quite a few rules. The movie
is a whole paraphernalia of customs and traditions being bent for one passion.
That includes rejecting push-up bras and plump sized cholis. 
Many of you
might wonder why football. Hey! I played football too! And don’t you dare give
me stuff like “Girls playing football?” As a little girl I was the only kid
with a football in my circle, which by the way included several boys. And my
shots were famous. They would cover half the field. We even had code names for different
types of passes. Just to get a professional feel.
