'Today's children lead a robotic life, they need to go out and play'

New Delhi, May 22 They have significantly different backgrounds. Amitabh Satyam, an IIT-K grad with an MBA from Ohio's Fisher College of Business, grew up in a village in Bihar where he played traditional games. Sangeeta Goswami, a practicing psychologist and coordinator at experimental methodology schools promoting integral education, has had her students play many of these games in Gujarat.

Their altruistic collaboration has resulted in "The Games India Plays - Indian Sports Simplified" aimed at reviving "our affinity, and respect for Indian things".

Both have memorable experiences of these exciting games and rue that over time, India - primarily the cities and towns - has moved away from these games and taken away a large slice of Indian culture.

"Kids today do not wish to go to school whereas I used to look forward to going. It was for playing games before and after school, and during the breaks," Satyam told in an interview.

"The life of today's children is robotic: From waking up to going school, returning home, doing homework, dining and sleeping. There is little excitement," Goswami noted.

The reasons are not difficult to find.

"India has had a brutal recent history with invasions, genocide and conversions. What remains of our culture is a mix of our aboriginal culture and those of the invaders. Our games disappeared primarily because many Ind, especially English-educated urban ones, believe that anything Indian is not cool. The second, and more important, is the onslaught from foreign games that are positioned as the proper games. The Olympics provide validation to these Western games.

"Once our games get accepted and popular, it will revive our affinity and respect for Indian things," Satyam pointed out.

"Western games are mostly individualistic, requiring infrastructure and equipment, and are mostly beyond the reach of most Ind. So, we realised that a guidebook, written in simple language describing each element of each game, would help encourage children to consider these games. That is how we started the arduous task of our initial research and interviews for the book," he added.

"We would like to see kids returning from school and eager to run out of the house to play when possible. We also would like to see children eager to go to school as the games would prove fun and relief from academic pressure," Goswami said.

Considerable research has gone into the writing of the 204-page book, which has been published by Bloomsbury and details 15 games, along with ground specifications and the rules under which they are to be played. Fourteen other games are also mentioned in brief.

"We started out noting down our own experiences, which established the baseline. In the second round we looked up books in the library and then searched for material in the public arena on digital platforms," Goswami said.

They zoomed in on 50 games in the first round.

"Five were well known