Seven Stones

The best part of April and May is that, it has comparatively long days. Good for children to play after school. You may be aware that June is the month, which has the longest day than all other months; but due to rainy season its long days is somewhat useless for children to play outside. You may say that October is also perfect time for outside play time but alas, it's time for boys to fly kite and they find all other play pale in comparison to flying kites;  besides its a month of Dashain, the biggest festival here in Nepal so this month has different charm than it being just a month being perfect for playing outside.

When I was young school girl, I was not much of sportive person. This applied for both indoor and outdoor games and as I grew more, I became fatter and fatter every week and games were not something  I found joy in it, unlike others. And that almost barred me to play games and join others in the game they enjoyed a lot. School time is the time, we had plenty of times to play, play and play after study. Seven stones was one game, I do remember playing and talking part more often than other games, that was played in Bal Mandir and may be only game I used to take part and enjoyed too.  

Maybe this game is one of the cheapest game to play, all you need is many people to play, which Bal Mandir never lacked, and all you need is some stones and a soft ball to play the game. What I like about this game is its so full of noise, commands and instructions to do things this way or that way and finding instantly what one thought was not the right way to place the stone on top of each others and others found the better way to finish the arranging it faster than it was thought previously.

Something tells me that, me taking parts in this game is because it must be the time before I got fatter which means, before I turn teenager. Hum, this is perhaps the only game that have more good memories I have playing with others. but, what I do not remember is, does this game needed seven players in each team ? But both team had some numbers to spread in the big background of the Bal Mandir as it provided enough space for us to play.

The players, probably consisting seven team members in each team, was divided in two team. One was to arrange the stones and others had to do all efforts to make that team to stop arranging the seven stones and complete one game. The best way to find enough time to arrange stones, which of course, is to place one on top of each other, a player of the same team had to catch the ball and then throw it, out of sight, while one is arranging, others are helping the person to keep arranging it, by distracting the other team’s players.

One of the easiest way to distract the opposite team’s players was throwing ball as far as it can go, or at places, which made it hard to find the ball faster.  Players could pass the ball amongst their team and throw the ball at the opposite team’s players, when they came to arrange seven stones, keeping each one on top of other, until all seven stones stood tall in perfect order, before the other team’s player can throw a ball on it and dismantle the each player's effort. If the ball touched the player, while arranging the stones, then he or she can not take part in the remaining game. Fewer number of players, made it hard to arrange the balls to take on shape and fast.

The good news is everyone had their own strength in this game, some could run fast to distract the player of other team and some could throw ball fast to out the player from other team and some enjoyed to dismantle the arranged stones every time it took shape and some enjoyed completing it against all odds. When you play game you hear all sorts of noise coming from all the direction at the same time, like Sunita throw the ball, Munna pass the ball here and hey Rabi go to arrange the stones and Raghav ! No, No, that is not how the stone is arranged, you have to know it properly to arrange, so that you can finish it faster or something like that.

Sometime, we had  stones that was easy to arrange and we could arrange it fast, but some of the guys in the team, who loved challenge found stones that was so hard to keep on top of each other and it used to take long time to arrange it, so that it could stand long enough to finish the game.

Some boys liked this game, so that they could hurl the ball with brute force and hurt girls in the team hard.  Its really hard to believe that they had fun doing that kind of act than in game itself. Perhaps, its we delicate girls assumptions about such things, that they want to hurt us, but may be its their normal force as they are stronger physically than we girls biologically.

However, its the game that reminds me of my childhood days, and all the cheerful and noisy sound around me, as if; it just happened yesterday; as if I just woke up from long sleep. Its only seems that the sleep had slipped into decades, overnight.