Play On

After several months I was finally granted one night of peaceful sleep and an entry into a joyous world of dreams. Nothing that happened during the waking day earned me that nocturnal bliss. Nothing I ate nor spoke nor did deserved rewards of that nature, but it is human folly to weigh every phenomenon and seek a clear link from there to things past or worse, braid tenuous ropes to a future portent, half raised by the guilty mind into reality. My day was plain and the world's bit in which I live was covered by clouds which failed to play their role. Failure to be the true self was filling the world around me, anyway! The night becomes more beautiful when one wakes up happy and is immediately surprised at the sheer lack of incidents leading up to that treasured salve to the aching soul. To think it was spent sleeping!

Amongst other beautiful things that happened to me that night, was the composition of 2 very interesting and intriguing games. I tried very hard to recollect the rules of the grand game which I had created, but in spite of going over the rules just before my eyes opened, I forgot all of it. I only remembered some part of it, and will return to it after a while.

The other game was also invented during my sojourn and I remember it with fair detail. I recall this game being played in 2 different ways. There were games played with only 2 people sitting facing each other and there was another session where children sat in a saw-tooth row. It was not as if every alternate child formed a team or anything, but they nevertheless sat in that manner.

The rules of that game were rather simple. Someone starts with mentioning a word and the next person must compose another word using the last 2 or more letters from the word mentioned by his companion and predecessor. As an example:

Person1: Multiple

Person2: Please (3 points)

Person3(or 1): Asexual (3 points)

Person4(or 2): Allied (2 points)

And so on till one runs out of words, when s/he gets to challenge the predecessor. If the predecessor can compose a word, then half the points of the challenger are transferred to the predecessor, else the challenger gets to choose a new word and start a new chain. A person can challenge atmost twice in a game. Simply adding an "er", "ly", "es", "ed", "ness" or plural forms do not count. Substrings of the word are also not acceptable. E.g. in the words aforementioned, Person3(or 1) cannot say "Lease" or "Leased". 

The participant with the maximum score wins. In a tie, the person who covered maximum domains (words from finance, law, medicine belong to different domains) wins. Thereafter, maximum successful challenges taken, minimum times when only 2 letters were used and eventually, votes on who used the most beautiful words are employed to resolve further ties. 

I remember spending several years creating the grand game (which wakefulness has made me forget) and then mastering it. I recall a scene where someone (who I think plays the character of my wife in there) comes forth to distract me with some mundane queries and I in a rage banish her from my life in order to focus on this grand game. She then gives birth to my son who returns to challenge me at the same game and defeats me. No, I have not been watching any Hindi movie of late. As I said, there were no bones from my day's carcass that went into the frame of my night's angel. I spent the following day regretting having forgotten the grand game's rules. I recall that it was a delightful bijou providing immense pleasure in creation and in indulgence.

Nevertheless, I woke up feeling quite happy and pleased with my sleep! It is rare that a night like that takes one unaware and for me it was a welcome break from life's nightmares!! :-D