Antakshari

Today we were playing antakshari at the Holi get together. We did not know any new songs so naturally only the golden melodies were being sung. The whole generation playing antakshari was singing the similar era songs on the alphabets they got. I realised a couple of things. In English language there is no game like Antakshari. How many sentences end with I or The? How can you sing when most songs start with I, The, Once, When and How?I cannot resist explaining the game, we all grow up with, in India. Antakshari means Ant : end , Akshar: alphabet ie last letter of the word. Akshar also means God. It also means God has the last word. Its a game with two teams and we call the teams as  'party'.  We say "Baithey baithey kya karein, karna hai kuchh kaam, shuru karo antakshari , le ka Hari ka naam." Translated from Hindi, We are sitting idle, lets do some work, lets start antakshari, starting with God's name. In Indian games, there is a lot of religion or belief in God. India was a land of theists. most religions in the world orginated in India. We have a claim over having the maximum number of Gods in our country. By God fearing I mean people were law abiding and there was a sense of discipline inculcated at a very young age. Starting a game by chanting God's name or remembering Him is not just auspicious, it is to have the strength to remove all obstacles when we begin a new journey. Instead of 'Hari' some say 'Prabhu' ka naam. God is known as Prabhu or Hari. Its talking about Oneness of Gods. Its about multiple religions with different names but One higher God. One singular Atman or Brahman, the Soul and the universe, all are one.
The first team/party starts singing a song begining with 'M', after they sing the chorus, the second party has to sing a song with the ending alphabet of the last word of the song.Each film in India has five to six songs. India makes the maximum number of films in maximum languages in the world. Indians like song and dance. Dance forms an integral part of our culture and religion. Children play this and sing big songs. The songs have big words which the meaning is unknown but the rythm is worth humming. Children of all age groups like music and they learn more from the songs than from nursery rhyme CDs which the new age mom insists on playing in her house. The nursery rhymes in English were all written during the World Wars to engage the kids away from the brutal reality. So most English nursery rhymes talk about loosing, lying, falling, breaking etc. Its kind of inculcating a fear based discipline in the kids. Its like if you dont listen, bad will happen to you. We owe our common love for reading to this language and I have nothing against it. The words rhyme and children like it. Some school want to use the same music but change the words. I am afraid that has failed miserably.
Coming back to Antakshari, we could sing songs or rather rattle them or rap them but we could not mug poems for our recitation test. Music has that masti about it. It can put all of us in a good mood. Now for the Indian moms who will say that our film songs are bad and have bad language, let me tell you, that not all songs are bad. Even the songs with so called bad words have good rhythm. What appeals to a child is music and that can come in a lot of forms. Antakshari is a great way to learn new words, make sentences and improve memory skills. Today in India most urban families are speaking English at home. mother tongue or a regional language is loosing out. Atleast, let rhythm, music and national language stay alive.