Families bond over boards, cards to kill time

TNN | Mar 25, 2020, 04.21 AM IST

Madurai: As people are being urged to stay indoors to prevent the spread of Covid-19, the demand for board and card games has gone up. Enterprising shops too have seized the opportunity to cash in on the situation by keeping ready enough stocks in the last few days.

``When we were kids, we would sit down for a game of cards after dad came back from work, mostly after dinner every day,’’ said T Kumar of Anna Nagar. But he rues that such habits had become forgotten today as children rarely find time to leave their phones and get family time.

Parents say they are thinking of ways to ensure the participation of everybody at home. Poornima of Anna Nagar said they had bought board games such as scrabble, ludo and monopoly. ``This is the first time we are actually buying games which we can play together and not just gift them to others. Besides, these games are great stress-busters,’’ she said. Many young parents have found that they did not know the rules of several of these board games as well as their parents did. Hence, these games end up as contests between children and grandparents in many homes.

Some small shops which opened on Tuesday saw people enquiring about cards such as UNO and the regular as well as ordinary cards. ``We don’t keep more than five packs at a time but they were all sold out last week,’’ said Thirupathy, a shopkeeper in K K Nagar. ``I didn’t know my grandfather could play games so well. He is a master at carrom and beat all of us on all the days we played,’’ said 16-year-old Sudhesh for whom his 80-year-old grandfather’s finger strength came as a revelation.