Thaaram Games Get-together - 2025


 As planned, everyone including Gafoor and Ramshi arrived around 2:45 3 PM timeframe at Greymont Park. We started off with a round of warm up Dumb Charades.

Then Bharathi started unpacking her magic box of games. Collecting tennis balls thrown by team mates into a stack of paper cups, blowing the balloon into a special paper cup that looks like two cups stuck together on the narrow edge, and passing on to your team mate who picks it up using another half blown balloon and passes on. I was pleasantly surprised that I could do my part as well and guys' team won the game. Sorting M & Ms by color with straw suction, catching a potato on a fork, vocabulary quiz,  enacting a song while the guesser is forced to listen to unrelated song playing on noise cancelling headset, the games list was never ending.

Innovative games. The most popular one was an improvised version of "What's the good word". We all stood in a circle. One person comes up with a category, and says one word that belongs to the category, and the next person can either say another word that belongs to the category, or can guess the category.  The one who started the round needs to say whether the word fits the category or not. This was a lot of fun. 

Priya and Sajee brought in tea and snacks from Doaba, while Chris brought homemade cake. Banerji who is most enthusiastic about having frequent group get togethers stood out with his absence.

The games experience today was really great. While I did feel like there is a little bit of lack of privacy with playing in the open park, the outdoors has it's charm, and we did have some enthusiastic audience. One takeaway moment was when Aiza drew two paper cards saying "Go Moms", and "Go Dads", with Aiza sponsored chocolates as prize for the winning team. Dads won it of course but that is not the point.

Special kudos to Anjali for initiating the event, and for Bharathi and Ramesh for conducting the games. Banter followed the games to end a fun filled evening of friendships.

Bharathi's eyes glitter when she talks about the sheets and sheets of games that she has in her games encyclopaedia backlog. Looking forward to the next one at Xmas!

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