I grew up in a big,
boisterous joint family where there was so much activity happening all the
time! Ours was a sprawling bungalow with a garden running all around it, the
office (of our family business) also housed with the bungalow and a small
factory in the backyard.
Daytime was a constant
buzz, filled with all kinds of sounds -- the men of the house trying to get the
Priya and Chetak (the scooters of those time) running by kick-starting them, with
our dog Pintu jumping and barking away in the background; the cooker whistling in
the kitchen, we kids swapping turns cycling and swinging in the verandah, and
the machines whirring away in the factory.
Powercuts were quite
often, especially during the summer. Cooking and eating dinner by the candle
light was quite common. The elders and older kids provided amusement with the
game ‘shadows on the wall’ while the younger tots like me gave the sound
effects for their actions:D
Post dinner, with no TV
to watch, we all used to put out the metal kots (called khaatla in gujarati) in
the angan and sit/lie down there under the starlight (which is very hard to
find these days except at hill stations!), while baa (grandma) and bapuji
(grandpa) used to sit in bamboo chairs in the verandah.
Once all of us had
settled in and were passing around the plastic hand fans and newspapers, we
would start with our favorite game – Antakshari!
We would split up in 4
groups and then my eldest uncle (whom we fondly call Pappaji) would do the
honours with “baithe baithe kya karein, karna hai kuch kaam, shuru karo
antakshari leke prabhu ka naam!” The first group would then start singing a
song with the akshar ‘ma’. And so it
would go on…what fun it would be, there would be those classics which had to be
sung without fail, such as ‘ramaiya vasta vaiya’ and of course those peppy
numbers to which we all kids would jump out of the khaatlas and do the
trademark dance steps, like ‘my name is lakhan’ and then the romantic ones
where the couples would do a duet on / dance to while the rest of the family
cheered on.
Me being one of the youngest would have a limited library of songs
and so will be anxiously waiting for that letter to come where I can finally
sing the song I know! I recall my performances as very enthusiastic, albeit
with a goof up of lyrics or pronunciation here and there, and followed by a resounding
round of applause from the entire family leaving me all glowing and happy!:)
The other most awaited
performance would be from baa who would only sing a song on much coaxing and would
be blushing all through her rendition:D
There would obviously
be the pro players of the game like my sisters who would inject various rounds
such as rapid-fire, jodi round (you have to sing the song pairing one hero/heroine
from the song sung by the previous group with a new one), situation round and
the likes!
All in all it would be
a most memorable time spent which made me in fact look forward to those power
cutsJ
And today, while
powercuts do persist, I see inverters in most homes which means life goes on as usual. Even where there are no inverters, family members are simply absorbed in
their respective ‘smart’ phones – from kids of this generation, the response to
a game like antakshari varies from silly to boring; they would rather tune in
to their iTunes playlist than participate in a game like this! And do I even
need to say about big, joint families…what I grew up in seems like another
world altogether, there are more cars and gadgets than the number of family members
in a home these days!
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