Of the days and games gone by.....

The six plus hours of power shut down today actually prompted some good family conversation time at home. The topics obviously varied between some family bashing, gossip and a special trip down memory lane...these moments are rare and far apart, and I do cherish these moments dearly.
We were talking about how we hardly see any today's kids play any of the games we played during our childhood (some of the games from my parents childhood were hilarious - that i must agree that i'd not heard of them till today).
My brother in his profound (he prefers the word "infinite") wisdom said kids today have other sort to games to engage themselves with. These range fromthe latest video games to cricket gear. They are pampered with the newage stuff which we in our times were deprived off. Firstly our dad would not have been able to afford this at that point and to be fair I dont know if any of these gadgets existed back then (even if they did, I definitely had no clue)
All I remember of those days is coming back from school.Getting rid of my tie,belt, shoes and heading out onto the road. My working parents would not be home yet...and my routine games of Kalla Police , Kallo Mannu, Ice Spice (I believe it must have been "I Spy"), Lagori, etc would engage me till my dad or mom would finally come out looking for me by around 8 pm.....
During the weekends and long vacations if I left home in the morning my mom would not be able to locate me till the lights faded out in the sky. Most days I would not even be home for lunch cos I almost always managed to snack out at good ol saroja aunty's house (my neighbour lady and my childhood playmate's mother).
And when it used to rain we would huddle up indoors to play Chowka Bara, Pagde, Algulimane,Kawade etc...
These according to me are some of the most amazing games ever. The outdoor ones were amazing entertaining with loads of physical exercise and the indoor games were brain sharpeners...
I wonder how many of the kids of today's generation have even heard of games such as these lest played any of them.... Sad that they are blissfully unaware of what they are missing out on.
I most definitely miss the days gone by..........but what saddens me most is that all of these games are now dead and gone......
I know for a fact that if I were do have children then I'm most definitely teach them these...they may not know of anyone their age who knows how to play these or I might even risk them thinking that their mom's uncool but then what the hell...........these games taught her a lot of fairness ,failure, strategy et al...and more importantly these were plain unadulterated fun...