Suddenly I have this regret –
Wish I had had my own club as a kid!!!
Imagine being the boss of your own club, holding clandestine meetings atop a tree, planning big adventures, deciding on strategies, executing them skillfully! All this with the help of a ‘believe to be real’ stuffed toy!!!
How many of you know Calvin!?
For those of you who don’t know him, he’s the five year old comic character from ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ by Bill Watterson.
That Calvin kid is crazy! Hobbes, his stuffed tiger, is real.. at least to him! He hates taking a bath, equates his mom’s healthy food to her attempt at murdering him, stays in detention every single day, has the messiest room, gets into trouble all the time!
Can’t each one of us relate to all this!?
I’m afraid my words can’t do justice to Calvin and the mischief he does, so please google it or read it in the Hindustan Times supplementary. I’m sure the more you read the more you’ll feel like the kid you once were or still are!
Note: It is NO heavy reading. So don’t use that excuse!
I own 4 volumes of ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ thanks to my mom, her friend and my friend! I’ve read all of them, but I still enjoy the daily morning dose of it; courtesy of my uncle, who sends photos of it on our family WhatsApp group!
Talking of stuffed toys, as a kid I had Bittoo, a doll for whom my granny stitched frocks! Later came Snuggles, my teddy bear, who’s at this very moment grinning at me from under the bedsheet! To me, he’s always been real and he ‘listens’ when I talk! 😛
So yeah, in the recent episode, Calvin plans his mission with Hobbes and kidnaps Susie’s stuffed rabbit! He sends her a photo of the rabbit in misery and a ransom note! Haha!
That’s when the regret set in! If only I had had my own club!
Though to think of it, I doubt I’d have made money that way. My stupid conscience would prick me to death!
Being a part of a ‘gang’ was the closest to owning a club! ‘Gang’ sounds so ‘Mafia’ and ‘We mean business’ type. Let me show you what ‘gang’ I belonged to!
Gang name: SS
Members: Bhagyashree and Me
Meeting point: atop a Wall (Trees were beyond our reach!)
The only notes that this ‘gang’ sent out were the ‘I’m sorry’ ones after fights and the only calls made were to Domino’s for pizza! Oh, these meetings were clandestine alright! To avoid being caught, we used to hide in a corner in the backside of her building and enjoy the pizza!
Occasionally we let in two guys, Ram and Hari, into the gang but they had to earn their rights!
Last evening, Pratik and I went to the club-house in our society to play.
Options were;
Table Tennis: my eye – hand coordination is limited to picking food from my plate and putting it into my mouth.
Chess: I wouldn’t be able to differentiate between the King and the Queen!
Pool: I’m too clumsy.
So we chose the only remaining option – Carrom.
I don’t know how the coins on the board are set. All I know is I need to get my disks into the corner pouches.
We played three rounds. There was so much of excitement and concentration in the air! Pp was aiming and striking repeatedly and I was performing black magic on his disks with the hope of delaying his victory! Oh, he won all three rounds but with a lot of misses, owing to my curses! Basically, I suck at carrom too!
The game of carrom got me thinking of my childhood. Fortunately I grew up in the 90s, untouched by the evil ‘mobile phone’! What the hell did I do then if not play cards, chess, carrom, badminton!???
I can’t even lie about having played chupa chupi, catch catch, blah blah.. there were friends in the area who played all of these but I was forever a ‘kacha limbu’. Bhagu was one too but she at least got her chance at catching because the others enjoyed being chased by her!
Bhagu and I played games that didn’t involve too much of physical efforts like hopscotch and board games! Barbie too! Not that we were weak or something, we preferred sitting on the wall in stead of running and chasing. One word for it – Lazy.
To our credit, we did enjoy one sport. Wrestling. Bhagu and I were inseparable, literally. When we fought, it was ugly. We punched, pulled each other’s hair, scratched, rolled on the floor! It was no less than the actual wrestling. We even had referees. Ram and Hari. The only difference was that these referees never stopped the match.
Apart from the above activities, we also enjoyed bird watching! We had a great eye for it! 😀
Years later, at this age, I may not be able to play any game decently but honestly I don’t care! I wouldn’t swap my childhood for any other!
Matching upto Calvin may not be possible but I can bet anything that Bhagu and I would definitely feature in the list of troublemakers of the 90s.
Someday, if my memory serves me well, I’ll write a book on our childhood days.
Cheers!
C.A.: Confused Aquarian 