Short Story: Hide & Seek by NIshi Pulugurtha

It was a quiet locality, the one we lived in. Rows of houses looking exactly like one another were lined up in four parallel lines with roads running in between and beyond. At the corner of the last row was a small park. It was built by the government years ago and then sold to people on the basis of a lottery. Quite a bargain in those days, my father always said. The market was not far off, there was a bus stand nearby too. It was just a short walk to board the school bus. School was a bit far for us, but I never complained. I enjoyed the bus ride. We had great fun. In the evenings, after school, we played in the park. We also played hide and seek out in the streets, hiding here and there, all over the locality – in someone’s backyard, behind a door. It used to get difficult as there were so many houses and roads, so we started to demarcate a specific zone that would be the place where we could run off and hide. During holidays, we played during the day too, but indoors. Carrom board was our favourite. We also played hide and seek at home but soon ran out of places to hide. During one such vacation, Dida taught us a number of card games too.