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Engaging in flights of fancy
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Making dollhouses and furnishing them with miniature furnitur is a creative pastime for kids
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Not all play Putting together a doll house can set young minds ticking
Barbie dolls are for sissies. G I Joes are for three year olds who pull them apart. But there are those who still play with them. “I like dolls,” says seven-year-old Parveen a little defiantly. “I play with them and I made a dollho
use for them.” “I like making the furniture,” says her brother Nilesh, who’s a year older. “I make the chairs and tables with small cardboard boxes and old calendar boards and broomsticks. Sometimes Pogo TV gives me ideas for carpentry work,” he says. He exhibits his office-ware, which consists of a worktable, two chairs, and a computer (he cut it out of an ad for computers, and stuck it on a matchbox). “It’s a flat screen,” he says proudly.
Adventures in doll land can be the keys to a new play kingdom. One that doesn’t involve gaping at the television for hours, staring at the computer, or playing video games. Instead, you have a whole new means of entertainment. “These activities make them think,” says Vedam, a homemaker, who gathers the children in the block to make dollhouses.
Creativity
“This is the perfect artistic exercise for kids who feel bored. It’s about learning to cut, paste, draw and colour, about imagination, execution and creative satisfaction.” Earlier kids would play with marapaachi dolls. A lack of props meant they had to come up with their own – and the age-old choppus, tiny wooden and tin cooking items were prized possessions. “We used to live on a factory site surrounded by maize fields and wild forests,” recalls Aruna Srinivasan.
“For Navaratri, cardboards became rows of houses in the colony, including the factory. Green sheets and fresh plants made the garden and jungle. Children’s cars and planes found their way into the helipad, the bus-stands and the roads!”
Such flights of fancy need not be restricted to festivals. In a roughly constructed six-roomed cardboard ‘house,’ enormous fridges, are a necessity, as are washing machines.
“My machine has two doors,” says nine-year-old Preetha. “One to put the clothes in and one to take them out.” Wall-pictures are also her speciality: she cuts actors and models from magazines, pastes them on cardboard, and hangs them up.’ While a dressing table is easy to make – “just stick six matchboxes together, and you’ve got drawers!” – spiral staircases still elude her skills.
Nilesh still takes part in aggressive games – but also makes time for this gentler pastime. “I can build my own place.It’s not from a shop – it’s my own stuff.”
PAVITHRA SRINIVASAN
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