Remembering the ’90s

Before kids started bragging about mobile phones, there was the BMX bicycle. Before Counter Strike became all the rage, there were indigenously-improvised outdoor games: body-body, torture-torture and makora-makora. Owning a Nintendo or Saga consoles was a privilege. If need be, boys would spend time at the gaming arcade across the road.

There were around 90 flats in Noman Plaza, a project located along Rashid Minhas Road. Just a few households had cars. There was enough space in the courtyard to set up wickets for cricket or use it for badminton or to even play hockey with that hardball!

No one seems to remember the origins of ‘body-body’. Apparently, some cousins of a boy named Umair aka Babu brought it from Kashmir during the summer vacations of 1991. Explaining it using just words without a diagram is difficult. But it involved two teams with at least seven players each. Players from one team would stand in a line and could move only horizontally while other players would try crossing them without being touched. Mostly it was only the boys who played this game. But whenever girls took part, winning became a matter of ego. The kids would play on and on, sometimes late into the night.

Origin of ‘torture-torture’ also remains obscure but some say it came into existence after the release of Sanjay Dutt’s Khalnayak in 1993. It was a simple game. Nasir aka Kaashi Romeo’s father owned a paper mill. They had a Suzuki pickup, which was used as a torture cell in the evenings. Boys from one team would run and hide while others searched for them to beat and draw out confessions. This game was played during the Karachi operation that took place in the ’90s.

There was no cable-internet or cable television. But there were many dish antennas on the rooftops. Every rainy season, the winds blew hard and the ultee deghchian (inverted saucepans) came flying down. Someone predicted it was sign of the impending judgment day. We waited and waited.

Then came the internet. It brought along the mIRC and other chat services. Everything changed. Karachi is a big city but there are no studies available on the subject of time and development affecting outdoor games. One can only talk about what one can see but I’m sure others must have observed similar changes that have occurred since the good old ’90s. Kids no longer play makora-makora, body-body or even badminton. Those entering their teenage years now, don’t even know what pal-toosh, pithu bari, chor pakram saathi, haathi ki soond or maaram peeti are.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 6^th, 2013.