A ring of nostalgia
Tuesday, April 22, 2008 at 11:48PM If and when I get to travel down memory lane, it is usually a few years down the past to before the kid, or before the kids, or at the most to, just before getting married.
Some more internal statistizing(?) shows, that your truly tends to go down 5-6 years down at most under normal circumstances and rarely past a decade when some deep emotional disturbance happens. Extreme elation or depression seem to open some strange doors in the brain which are otherwise collecting cobwebs and the rare flashback happens!
The fact that most of what we see in our daily life seems to dwell increasingly on the present, be it the blogosphere, SUN TV (old movies from our childhood are a rarity), the lack of other TV channels at home, books (Kite runner appealed so much, mainly because it brought back memories of the late seventies!) and things that connect to the past are few and far between are possible reasons.
Imagine my surprise then on watching this Tamizh movie at home called "Kannum Kannum", I find myself going down memory lane, not 5-6 years, not 10 years but a full 30! The movie was different, with good acting performances but ended up being too long. Would definitely recommend a watch with a nice DVD remote that can Fast forward with subtitles on and the sound still playing! What the movie lacked, it made up by connecting a few critical neurons in my head!
This family in the movie, was playing "ring ball" on a large terrace! Tell me people, when was the last time you played "ring ball" or "ring" or "ring toss", as we used to call it? A simple, almost solid white rubber toroid, light enough to be tossed around and caught, but heavy enough to hold traction with your fingers? The texture of a ball, the feel of a frizbee, a unisex sport for all family?
Drifted into the past effortlessly, after watching that scene. So many great memories of playing "ring" as a child with my brother, sister, aunts, kids we had hardly met in houses we rented. Even caught glimpses of the faces of some of those kids while dreaming with my eyes open.
Do they even sell these rings anymore? If they do, going to ask MIL to get one for the kids, (okay, okay, it is really for me!) when she comes back here.
Time to open up more doors inside my head and create some new ones inside the kids heads so they can dream a few decades from now!
"Ring" toss anyone?
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Reader Comments (8)
Ofcourse they do. Ofcourse, people play. There is a group of middleaged men who play 'ring ball' everyday morning and extensively so during the weekends at Madurai's Race Course Stadium !
For the rest of us, it is aweing nostalgia !!
They do. My sister just got 2 of them for us from India for my 2 year old to play, though we need to be more careful playing outside so that it does not hit the other kids in the neighbourhood
I bought a few during one of my trips and plan to inaugurate them this year. They are called tenniquoit (sp) and tournaments are played by the rest of the world.
BTW, how did you like the movie? I loved the fact that courtallam was very much alive in the movie.
just because you lost in touch with the game doesn't mean that the game has become extinct. Ah U IT PPL...come out of the mindset of, you are the world...sam
Kavi, glad they play.
Sam,
1. I am not IT people
2. the observation was based on my younger cousins and todays kids in Madras not playing ring anymore.. Just like Kites have disappeared, thought this had also disappeared..
that was all! Looks like Kites, Kuththu pambarams, rings etc. seem to be more common outside Chennai.
anon, glad you got it. Will get some for my kids too..
munimma, tenniqoit. Now I remember. My mum used to play it in her teachers games at school and win prizes. Did like the movie for the scenery and the backgrounds. that was one amazing view from a house rooftop.. just amazing.
sam i am (not):
why should it folks be blamed for game's demise (or not)?
sundar:
has twenty20 entered your jargon yet, or is your sanyaas ongoing? i vaguely remember that you were going off the (cricket) air or a year right around this time.
why i brought up twenty20? because tomorrow us it folks (not you) will be blamed for converting test cricket to 3 hour tamashas, where the players won't evn have time to tie up their pajamas! ;-) that said, i love both the icl and the ipl (and maybe even the epl, if it fructifies).
oh, and re: "ring tennis" - unisex? naah! maybe in chennai ... but none of my friends ever played it. the only persons i ever played it with were my mother and kid sister (about three decades or so ago!)
re: kites, we flew one last week, after a gap of about three years. but the last time i had flown one before that was ... yup, about three decades ago (from now)!
- s.b.
Tennc(q)oit still played in India. Not as common as when we were young! The tennicoit tournament is part of South asian games.
Coincidentally, there was an artile on Anandha vikatan this week about a neglected national level tennicoit player(male).
I was racking my brain to figure out what the other name for ring ball was since reading your post. Did nt think to come back and look for the comments! Relief! Yes, we had tennicoit tournaments in our school too and I absolutely loved to play! Awww... nostalgia! :)
Remember our street tournaments, yaada yaada? ;)