Want to play or not? Yes, albeit the bad English, that was how as children, we approached the topic of play. Nothing has changed very much since, until the arrival of computers. Computer games like Nintendo,PlayStation, PSP etc have since changed forever our kid's idea of fun and entertainment. They no longer need to play in groups as their choice of interactive partner is reduced to a machine, chips, disk and memory cards.

Computer expert they have become. On the downside, they have turned into social nerds, hermit, outcast as they spend so much time with themselves. At the most, only one more child will join them in the odyssey of fun.

Back to this morning, playing wasn't planned this morning. We had organized an outing of breakfast, then to an early morning movie with an old friend of ours. Since that failed, I reminded Siddharth maybe there was an unfinished chore to attend to at home, which was scrubbing the foldaway mattress.

Out came the high pressure host and the bottle of Holy Cow. They swept the yard, cleaned of dried leaves and twigs, cleared the area and started hosing. As Siddharth has done this quite a number of times, this was an easy task. Next, with the mattress was finally hung up and shouts of," Wrap up everything and get ready for lunch .....", Junju came running and asked " Could we spray ourselves with the hose?".

What a blast they were having the whole morning. They hosed themselves and everything in sight wet. The child in me would have love to join in the fun if I did not have the house to attend to. Both soaked to their bare skin, giggling, laughing, screaming, shouting and of course the unavoidable bantering between brother and sister was obvious. Of course, shouts of "I hate you", " see what you did .... cause me to fall down", could be heard but that could easily be silenced by "this is great fun and the best morning I've ever had", when everything ended.

Yes, that's what real fun is, simple joy of spending time, sharing love and sibling bonding. Etching memories that will withstand the good times and bad,

Fun is rather priceless, isn't it. So, want to play or not? Please say yes.