The Kids Are Alright!

Right next to my office building is an Upper Primary school run by the government. It looks more like a cleaner cowshed really, right in the center of the plot. On both sides of the school building is the playground – on the left side the boys play and on the right side the girls play. I don’t think that this is meant to be segregated this way but it just so happens that on the left side are what seems to be a version of a football field cum cricket pitch. There are two goal posts that I can see on one end – what looks like goal posts as there is no netting.

On the right side of the building the girls play on swings, see saws, a kind of carousel and I also see a few kids reading under the huge tree that offers a lot of shade. The girls seem to be going at a more leisurely pace during their break while the boys are in aggressive games of cricket almost everyday. The school hasn’t provided them with proper equipment so the boys make due with what I assume are sticks of plastic or bamboo and not proper cricket bats. No pads or caps and they play with a rubber ball – bright blue!! I’m two floors above yet I can see that bright blue. And the kids bowl underarm while the batsmen or batboys use all their might to swing at the balls toss to them. The fieldsmen run and jump and lunge to catch them.

As always across schools throughout the state, the players are quite serious about their game. Today there seems to be a lot of caught outs! One frustrated player threw his ‘bat’ 50 feet away in disgust as he was out within a minute of joining the game. Two boys at the far end were cracking jokes to each other – that’s what it seems like, cause they keep going off into fits of laughter, doubling over in the hilarity. I don’t see any teachers or gym teachers during these sessions. Reminds me of my childhood days in school although we played a lot more football than cricket in our school grounds.