A sneak peak into child's play in a village : what does it reveal?

A sneak peak into child's play in a village: what does it reveal?

Look what I found on my latest sojourn to Gharo. In a small village tucked away from the highway is an idyllic village, the village of Ishaaq Jhokio. This is where I reconnected with the concept of play as understood in days, which seem from another time another world. I made the acquaintance of Samreen and Ambreen, two girls aged perhaps 5 and 8, who allowed me a peek into their little make believe world of play.

A view of Ishaak Jhokio Village, Gharo

Play and creativity go hand in hand or at least used to. When I was young (how long ago was that?), the culture of creating your own games and toys was still rampant. Owing to the dearth of toys available locally, the Toy R Us toys, the Cindy’s, the Barbie’s were things your uncles and aunt's bought for you from America or were available at your rich friend's house for you to go and play with when invited to birthday parties. So most of us resorted to our own devices. Among a favorite past time for the girls was creating dolls houses. These we did diligently recycling old boxes and pieces of cloth and creating spaces for our ‘Sonia’ and ‘Tara’. Another was the ‘shaadi’ (wedding) of the dolls. Clothes were stitched and created for the doll to be married and a grand trousseau was prepared including clothes, bedding, furniture etc. If we analyze this activity its quite fascinating.

The creation of your own toys or giving them a makeover is quite creative activity. It allows a close inspection of form and a molding of things to suit it. As a doll is built from scratch it will allow a child to identify the forms and try to recreate the chosen form with materials. It allows material exploration and manipulation as well as development of motor skills.  It also includes the concept of adaptation and creating and giving the creation the original mark of the maker. Thus the creator or child learns to become autonomous and confident. Some would argue that playing with digital games also instills a sense of autonomy as a child is responsible for the outcome of the game. But lets explore this autonomy. A child playing dress up in the virtual world is working with a set of given templates, which are used by hundreds of others playing the same game. The result is an amalgam of presets determined by the game developer, which you believe are your own creations. How does that compare to creating some thing from scratch, something which bears your own mark.

Samreen with her prized possessions, dolls.

The activity of creation of dolls and their houses could not be done in isolation. You needed to go to mummy to get cloth, ask Dadi's (grandmother) help in stitching, and go poking around the stores and kitchen looking for old materials you could recycle. Empty shoes boxes became doll’s houses, scraps of cloths converted into curtains, old night bulbs were retrieved from trash and proudly fixed to the ceiling of a doll's house. This activity entailed an engagement with the environment, a close inspection of the things, which became dysfunctional or useless so that they could be reused for play. There also existed a culture of exchange. I remember exchanging a small light bulb with a piece of mirror for my doll-house with my neighbor, Tauseef. Creativity was not just out of the box thinking, creativity also meant creative recycling and working with limitations. I wonder when the concept of creativity became synonymous with novelty.

Another important aspect that entailed this activity was the engagement with space and scale. You looked at the size of the shoe-box inside and outside. Was the shoe-box sufficient for the doll you chose? Then you built furniture for your doll and the furniture obviously had to match the size of the doll. Breaking my head over lengths and estimations in Math with my kids, I wondered why they don't understand. And laboring over concept of space in the Design studio class that I teach I wonder at this lack of understanding in students. Perhaps it is the 3D virtual environment, which limits their active engagement with space. Their understanding of space and scale thus remains underdeveloped.

Well, to come back to the lovely Samreen and Ambreen from village Ishaak Jhokio, they showed me how they had made their lovely dolls from old bottles and scraps of cloth.  And they had found a secluded spot in the hedge, which made up the boundary of their house, and created a dolls house. Small stones and empty boxes had been converted into furniture. Both girls had their own set of dolls and were extremely proud of them. It was a fascinating peak into their make-believe world. A peak, which took me back in time to my childhood.

A view of her secret play place

Spatial organisation and recycled scraps- a close-up of the doll's house

To finish up, this is not meant to be an anti-technology post, so techie friends, don’t get upset. It is a mere introspection of the consequences of my own behavior as a parent, when I allow my children limitless access to technology as no encouragement for the kind of self devised play that actually encourages creativity, refines motor skills and hones powers of observation. It is also an attempt to understand and identify one of the causes of the dearth of spatial understanding students exhibit when they arrive in studio as students. And perhaps an explanation of the lack of economical and ecological design solutions by designers these days, designers for who design starts and ends with the computer screen these days. A design, as Balaram (1998) writes, is neither responsive to the socio-cultural requirements of the people nor cognizant of factors such as environment and personal health. As Heidegger (1977) explains “We must ask : what is the instrumental in itself”. The questioning of technological solutions is not to be anti-technology but by doing so aiming to develop a free relationship to it. And finally to try to look at existing and past practices, not as mere nostalgic journeys but for a careful sifting of worked and what didn’t. “The realization that we must foster human receptivity and preserve endangered species of pre-technological practices that remain in our culture in the hope that one day they will be pulled together into a new paradigm, rich enough and resistant enough to give new meaningful directions to our lives,” Dreyfus (1995).


References:
Balaram, S. (1998) “For the People, by the People: Design without Designers”, Thinking Design, Ahmedabad, India : National Institute of Design
Dreyfus, H. L. (1995) “Heidegger on Gaining a Free Relation to Technology”, in a Feenberg & A. Hannay (Eds), Technology and Politics of Knowledge, Bloomington : Indiana University Press.
Heidegger, M. (1977) “The Question Concerning Technology” The question concerning technology, and other essays, New York: Harper & Row.