Let the games begin

At home and bouncing a small red ball from wall to wall. I haven't done this in a while. At one time, this occupied a lot of my free time. It had several more sophisticated versions. Wall tennis, wall cricket, wall table tennis among many. (Wall tennis is technically solitaire squash, but not if you play for Becker or Ivanisevic.)

There was home football too, sometimes simply consisting of direct free kicks or penalties. But the balls left their mark on the walls, so after they were freshly repainted, I was banned from hiring them for my sporting leagues for a year. This has not been the only attempt to curb the bounce; in Bombay, a neighbour complained about the noise I was making (or so he said) on the common wall, thus ruining one of my better tennis leagues. I had to switch to home basketball (with pelmet niches replacing hoops).

No sport was without commentary or detailed scores. There was inevitably a bit of matchfixing involved if India was playing. I remember tearing out a cricket sheet while playing book-cricket when try as I might, the pages spelt doom for the team. Book-football & "pen game" were the rage in school, with an after hours league. Book-tennis didn't last that long.

The streets are empty - no one plays for timepass any more. Instead, they go to special facilities to become World no. 1.