Games We Played Before Screens

Before screens kept score, evenings kept inventing games. Streets, school grounds, and house compounds became boards. A stone, a stick, a chalk circle, and enough children to argue about rules were sufficient technology.

Lagori, kalla-aata, chinni-dandu, hopscotch variations, hide-and-seek with neighbourhood geography as map — the catalogue changes by town, but the grammar is shared: run, aim, pretend, negotiate.

What the games taught

They taught losing in public. They taught alliance. They taught how far you could go before someone’s mother called. Soft skills arrived as bruises and laughter.

Screens are not villains; they are simply different. Remembering pre-screen play is a way of asking what kinds of togetherness we still want for children — and whether the street, even a smaller one, still has room for a chalk circle.