Silly Games

Teenage girls have a propensity to attempt an unfolding of the mysteries of their future; often slipping into reveries about that all important person – The Husband – how he is going to be, his eyes, hair, hands, mouth; the males of the species are rather on the fortunate side, they do not burden themselves with such exotic fancies, restricting their flights of fancy to just a three-letter word. Correct me if I am wrong.

We used to amuse ourselves with a silly game the text of which someone had secretly smuggled in; bored 14 year olds trying to while away time in slightly more useful pursuits than listening to the droning monotone of a History teacher. The theme was an all-time favourite – Love, of course. It was simple, more of an amusement than a game, requiring pretty simple arsenal – a pen and paper. It hinged on the basic premise that every human being would be curious about what the object of one’s affection thought about oneself. One had to think of a boy whom one was very fond of and make a series of short strokes on the paper. Three such rows had to be made. Then groups of three were cut off, so in every row there would be either 0, 1 or 2 strokes left. The score of this very interesting exercise was calculated thus: if the first row had 2 strokes left, the second none and the third had 1 stroke, the score would read as 201.

This would then be compared against the Result Sheet. Each score signified something. We had copied those in the last leaf of our notebooks. It read something like this:

000 – I love you.
001 – I am thinking of you.
010 – Don’t waste my time.
011 – I will marry you.
……
222

And of course the results of each one’s ardent enterprise to pry into the mind of that-cute-boy-across-the-road would be greeted by giggles and blushes and howls of laughter. It didn’t matter that every time the scores turned out to be different; of course his thoughts and feelings for you were bound to change over a period of time. We never doubted or questioned the wisdom of our Bible.

It would have been very unwise indeed, if I had attributed this unrelenting thirst to drink the subconscious of another soul, to the precincts of just a bunch of bored schoolgirls. But as I was to find out, the wider world was no different, in fact I discovered further possibilities in this realm.

When I went to the city to do my pre-degree, I had to stay in a hostel. Now, hostel-life is something one must experience in one’s life-time. It’s like no other; there is so much to be learnt from a hostel. Like how to get ragged and rag (I never did), how to have midnight binges with the little potato chips or cornflakes that we had, how to beg, borrow or steal food, most importantly how to put a face to Mr. Right, the ones we all saw as a vague shadow, a misty silhouette in the mind’s eye.

The technique again was very simple. One had to get a small sprig of a wild creeper that grew lush, flowering in profusion over the hostel fence. After dinner, at about 9 o’ clock in the night, we would all quietly go to the fence in search of the perfect sprig; a shock of bright pink flowers, a hint of green and a coiling brown tendril. Once the booty was in one’s hand the person had to keep quiet till the next dawn. She was not supposed to open her mouth; instead she had to concentrate on the face of Prince Charming, pray for him to grace her dreams. With a small bunch of weed in our hands we would walk back quietly, the chatter abruptly cut short, like an old procession of druids who carried sprigs of herbs with them.

The holy weed(ha!) would then be placed beneath the pillow to forcefully attract the image of his divine face in one’s dream that night. And it worked.

But only when we left the hostel did we come to know that this very secret ritual was revealed to us by the hostel warden herself who always complained about the loudness of the girls’ chatter, especially in the night. Oh well!