Vacation musings

The summer vacation is here . The present bustle of activity is summer camps engaging children in various tasks like swimming, karate, dance, theater, computer,football, athletics, cricket, tennis and educational camps like math classes, abacus etc..
The children of today are involved either in such activities organised by their parents or they keep themselves busy watching television, playing video games and the more sophisticated amuse themselves with Wii and X Box.
Reminiscence of yester year games makes me feel that today's children have missed out something of value and joy that we cherished in our childhood. Vacation meant playing games like gilli,goli (marbles),kathadi(kites), bambaram (tops),hide and seek, robber and police,hopscotch, cycling and swimming. Our rural cousins played in addition to this, pallankuzhi and kuzhangkal etc..These games would seem alien to the children of today. Many of us spent the evenings listening to Radio Ceylon as there was no TV. We read comics such as Phantom, Mandrake, and Chandamama. Enid Blyton's Famous Five and Five findouters and the Dog, Secret Seven were read by the young ones while the older kids stealthily read James Handley Chase and some even had a sneak preview of Harold Robbins. Libraries were very few and we used to cajole and beg our parents to take us to the library.