Learn to play, play to learn

The age old saying ‘All work and no play make jack a dull boy’ hovers around my mind as I head away from the crossroad of life that I was few months back. The heady feeling of finally having a goal in life(actually a short term one) to CRACK THE CAT has finally subsided. Pending assignments , vivas approaching at break-neck speed, projects that need to be completed and also the tests that are thrown to us -the so called MODATs have all bottled up . And the ‘trying –to- be -perfectionist’ that I am just makes me feel I am in deeper shit .

As I sit wid books strewn all over trying to figure out the basic concepts of my subjects I see children playing some game that I just don’t understand…my inner voice asks me…

When was the last time you played with the water in your shower?
When was the last time you threw stone-chips in the lake to see them bounce?
When was the last time you played something that is neither a sport, a video game, nor a board or card game? Say not even a game?

Remember childhood? Yeah? We used to play with our G.I.Joe and our toy car, and for some, the doll and the soft toys. We would pick up a stick while walking and we would play with that. We made stories related to them, put the action figure into the bathtub, and it would start swimming, covering the whole length, ready to fight the enemy on the other side. Our batmans used to travel from one building to another on a manja(dats what I call doing it the Badri way!!!) Our car could speed down the walls, fly in the air. These stories didn't have a name. They couldn't be classified as games.

What made us do that? Why the hell did we play with such things?

Yes, there is a simple answer. We were kids. We weren't old enough to know that it made no sense.

Or are we assuming so?
When school started, we were taught things. Science and Maths and language. School was the way to make us learn and grow - Be someone.
We started to study. Spent a lot of years studying after that.
Then we came to college. College was fun. We would hardly even study.
But by the time we stepped in college, we had stopped learning. For our tenth standard, there was hardly anything new to learn for us. We refreshed our knowledge, applied it to our old concepts and scored very good marks.

Now we turn back to the questions at the top. At that time, we knew absolutely nothing. About animals, things, dreams, enemies, people- nothing. And we wanted to know. We were curious, about everything. 'How was I born?' to 'Where did grandpa go? Why doesn't he ever visit?'.

Now, in present, that we know the facts, we link them to things, and things to things, and so on.
We play games now. Using a set of rules, with the goal to win. All games fall under this same category. We don't play to lose. Doesn't make sense.

Completely agree that we need to come of age. Need to take things in life as and when they come but...What if we started playing a no-game, again?
We could create a new world for ourselves. At the same time, we could apply our learnt facts to this new world, whenever we wanted. Doing this, we could just learn something new. Something that never struck. Same as we did when we were kids.

What do we have to do?
As the caption for Nirmaan 08 went ’Unleash the child within' And don't let the child grow ever. Start with half your age, and work your way down to the toddler you were.

Play with Lego. You could learn design.
Fight with the shower-water like Ishaan does in Taare Zameen Par. You could learn anger management.
Scribble on the paper like a toddler learns to hold a pencil. You could master the art of Calligraphy.