Board Walking...(part 4) : We're In Scrabble!

My mother has two sisters, an older sister and a younger sister. The husband of the younger sister, our choto khalu, is a very nice person. Compared to the other two jamai's (my dad and my boro khalu), he was quite different. First of all, he was young, energetic and athletic. He pleasantly lacked that "murubbu" bhaab, which is annoying. This khalu and his family spent their lives abroad for quite some time, on and off.

I had two hang out gangs during that phase of my life, one at home, and one at my Grandmother's (Home of my mother's parents). I'll call them "home" and "granny's" from now on. These references are technically incorrect, because my home was also "granny's", as my father's mother, as in dadu also lived with us. Anyways, at my granny's, my cousin and my youngest mama was my gang-partners. Mama being the senior one was the leader, and we were faithful followers. We used to do a lot of things for passing time, ranging from reading books to listening music. One day, choto khalu gave us a Scrabble board, and taught us how to play the game. Things changed drastically. We started spending all our time playing scrabble.

We used to split ourselves up in 2 teams, one would be me and mama, and the other would be my dad and my cousin. My dad wasn't really interested in these shoshurbari visits. We'd usually go there on Thursday afternoons and return on Friday evenings. After returning from Saudi Arabia, that was kind of a regular routine. He'd spend most of his time reading the newspaper (infact, memorizing it, literally!) and or reading books that were scattered here and there. Yeah, he'd read Tin Goenda books, too--just to kill boredom. But since the arrival of Scrabble, dad also found a good way of spending time.

Why I never paired with my dad? I can't really tell the reasons now...it's been a while. But during that time, these teams would appear the most logical choices. Oh yeah! There was one reason. My dad could never forget the fact that he was my dad. Hence, I'd get scolded every now and then. Maybe it was a 3 letter word, or maybe it was taking some more time--whatever. I always had some fault, and I needed to be pulverized instantly. I don't have much grievance against him. All these scolding sessions throughout my childhood has made me a scold resistant person, and I have learnt the wonderful technique of putting words through one ear and kicking them out off the other ear instantly. Hehe....

It won't be a complete story if I don't describe my relationship with this mama. I don't like mentioning names, as you might have noticed by now. I spent the first 9 years in KSA, but after that, I kind of grew up with him. Both of us were proud Scorpios, and both of our first favorite band was Scorpions. Scorpions was the band that really got me in to music. My granny's was a music loving family. Almost everyone liked music, and my two younger mamas were more than connoisseurs. They inspired me, and I picked up the heritage.

Hehe I used to think that people who have the starsign Scorpio were supposed to be called "Scorpions". I loved associating myself with that lovely(!) species.

I was mesmerized by the game Scrabble. I'd eagerly wait for "that next travel to granny's", not for meeting the folks, but for playing scrabble. I had a vocabulary rich enough to ashame lots of grown ups, thanks to Sesame Street and all the cartoon shows. This made the teams quite balanced. Infact, we were a bit stronger in a number of aspects. My father was way experienced than us. He is surprisingly good at English. Even today he manages to surprise me by using words that'd be totally alien to an average Architecture/Engineering background person.

Sometimes we'd made up words! Hehe, words that sound like a word, but are unknown to us, that is. Events like these needed to be verified via dictionary. That was the time when I first came across this marvellous book. I'd eagerly take up the task up finding out the words. That was a good training, cause I never felt uncomfortable with a dictionary when I actually needed that book for study purposes. As these imaginary words became superfluous, a rule was set upon mutual agreement. If a word couldn't be found in the dictionary, the team will lose their turn.

By the way, the team concept was that mine's and mama's points would be added together for the team's score. Sometime there'd be a 1vs1 game, too, where two person would jointly suggest the words. Pardon me for not describing what Scrabble is, it's a game where people are given 8 tiles, and different alphabets would appear on the tiles. Each tile had a distinct score, and these letters were to be strategically placed on the board. There were different options like "Double word score", "Triple Letter Score", etc. So if you managed to make Jaguar, and your J falls on a Triple letter score, your score for J with triple. After making a word, you could refill your deck with taking the same amount of tiles from a bag, without looking in to the contents. The game went on until all the tiles were finished up. The game would also stop when there was a stalemate, i.e. no more possible moves.

Later on, I was allowed to bring the board to my home. After numerous pleading events, and when my gang partners kind of lost interest in it. I taught the game to my paternal family, and they liked it, too. But things were less colorful here, and more formal. Elders couldn't stand the fact that I, a 10-12 year old lad can beat them in an educational game. So that never went too far. And there was my chess partner cousin as well. He wouldn't even want to play with me later on. He said I was too good, and I didn't feel good about it at all. It was like "Why the hell did I have to be so good? Now I'm out of partners!". Yes, I was pissed off.

I still love this game. I did play online Scrabble for a month or two, but it's turn based, and too much slow for me.