#goodoldfriends

18-08-2019, Thiruvananthapuram.

My friends and I love to have hearty conversations about anything in the world. Sometimes we go deeply into the topic that our hands and plates get dry.

Today, we talked about the days when there were no electronic gadgets like phones, tablets or computers. The way how people used to live outdoors more than indoors. For adults, children playing in the neighborhood were a treat to their eyes. They used to scream and shout and laugh wherever they went. So lively it used to be! Children then bruised their joints, thus leaving scars of thousands memories of the games they played.

There were innumerable games of weird names, while some had decent names. Be it like crocodile-crocodile or coca-cola or ham burger-ham cheese. They've played it all. Played with all their hearts.

Vacations were like a cherry on top of cake. Children used to spend the whole day together. Sleep overs, fixed timing TV shows, activities were common. It was fun though, but doubled or even tripled the work load for the parents. But at the end of the day, it all became a sweet memory.

Now fast forwarding those days, today we could hardly see a kid like those kids. There's a void that needs to be filled in the neighborhood. Children now are handed with smartphones and tablets at a very tender age just to make them sit at one place so that their parents could do their work. Thus, developing the habit. Also, they see their parents doing so, they try to imitate them more and more. I have seen parents scolding their young ones just because they were using their parents' smartphones to watch YouTube or playing online or offline games . Parents often do not realize that it's their fault that they dragged their kids into this, made them develop this habit and later blame them for this. How bad can it go? Children are not living the outdoors as other children are busy holding the smartphones, obviously YouTube, some racing games or some dress up the doll games. They are not able to make memories like children earlier used to make. They're getting obese, their minds are not developing. There are so many things that might be harming them from inside.

After all of these, my friends and I realized that we spent and hour talking about it. We realized that our hands and plates got dried, as usual. Honestly speaking, while having this talk, it took us into a rollercoaster ride of memories. We laughed talking about the games we played. We shared our stories of our Humpty Dumpty falls, stories behind every scar. We have a bunch of good-old-days stories. Do the children now have one such story?

Watch this!