""Playway methods of the rural children of Tamil Nadu."(Part II)

When a child attains three years, even in the rural areas of Tamil Nadu,the parents of the child try to admit them in a nearby kinder garden schools either in the pre-KG or LKG.Suppose, they don't have any schools nearby, then upto the age of five, the child is left free, often accompanying them to the agricultural fields where their parents go for labour work or simply remain at home.

When three or four such children gather, they play sometimes,hide and seek or sometimes,what we call Koottanchoru ,the eldest of them leading the way.They sit in a particular place,build their own house, just a kind of border with the help of a stick, drawn around them.For the variety of dishes,they use different colours of soils like red soil, black soil,river soil which is notable for its nicety, etc mixing them with water and keeping them in separate small earthernwares, usually purchased from the nearby,"Santhai"(a market place which assembles once in a week, either on Sunday or Tues day, according to the local demands of the people), and of course some handful of real rice procured by any one of them from his or her house stealthily.Each soil mixed with water, according to its colour is named as Samabar, Rasam, curd or buttermilk etc.The leaves of banyan tree or pupil tree or what we call Erukkan leave is used for serving and eating.

It will be very nice to observe them while they play Koottanchoru.Of course, of the playing members, one of them, will be the housewife and the head of the department, who is incharge of mock-cooking, and a person normally the eldest of them, will be the husband, who just go away for sometime from them for his job and again return home damn tired.The smaller members of the team will be children of the family.When the time for meals comes, all the family members are served with colourful dishes,described above, of course, with small glasses of water,nearby their leaves.The children actually know what they are doing.They simply pretend to eat what they are served to them and after finishing their meals they go to sleep.This play is a virtual family rehersal, but free from all the accompanying worries, problems and criticisms etc of a real family run by the elders.

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