Toys

Since a long time now, I have been wanting to write a post on the kind of toys I played with in my childhood. This thought was triggered primarily by two things: the reading of Roland Barthes'  "Toys" from Mythologies and my discussion on the same some time ago with a students during the Humanities lecture. Rather, I wanted to test if my toys have really shaped me!? I thereby started to write on cartoons too. But that article is not complete yet. I  have to refine it further such that I can make it into a formal paper.

I hardly remember what were my childhood toys like! Perhaps I must have thrown them, chewed them or swallowed some of it - I dont know! The faintest memory of my first toys is a jumping chicken which my mother brought for me after I got my teeth extracted! It was a white furry chicken which lasted for a long time and needed to be keyed. Yes, there were a lot of toys which worked on keys. My uncle used to travel to foreign countries very frequently. He had then got us (my brother and me) a car each. Mine was an old style fiat! I loved it. I would keep rolling it around my axis! During 1990 we had the opportunity to go to Singapore. My parents got a lot of toys for us from there. They were mostly electronic. Electronic toys could be trusted being imported! But it was an eclectic mix - a golden robot, 2 fighting tanks, a set of cars - all of it worked on batteries! I don't remember but there must have been a lot more! We must have misplaced them here and there.

As we grew, our choice of toys became peculiar. I was drawn to more human toys, more subtle; while my brother to the  more destructive and aggressive! I had a distinct liking for teddy bears! They were quite expensive then. So my first and the only teddy bear was stitched by my mother. My aunt gifted me another one on my birthday some time later. I kept them for a long time! I also remember buying a doctor's set - I would see myself as one! It had plastic scissors, cotton, bandage, a fake thermometer - all that! I still remember it cost Rs. 28/-. We got toys only on two occasions: on getting a good result or on a birthday. There were no un-occasional toys. 

Further I invested more in the GI joes - they were really marketed well and I wanted to almost make a collection. Over 4 years, I could collect only 4 of them, through which I would weave stories and plays. Immediately then, the teddy bear became the monster due to its size...Cars were all half broken so they could carry the gi joes...I had enough material to create a setting.

Later, I invested in toys like the safari (cars going through a track), i also had "The Young Architect" and "The Mechanix". I took a game on cricket too, which i seldom played! But these were the toys through which I really experimented a lot! I would not stick only to the manuals, but would go on to make more exciting moving things. 

There is another aspect to the whole story - games: all sorts from board games to the virtual ones (video games and computer games). I had distinct liking for games. I would play games like Business or Ludo with my friend and I guess it informs my notions of 'circulation' that I use in my architectural work today. Computer games like Prince of Persia and Digger presented the world of 'sections' to me. Later as we played newer games, they appeared in perspective. Spaces revealing themselves in perspective were scary...sectional spaces were so much subtler! Games like Tetris on the video games probably taught me articulation - of fitting things together compactly. I had immense liking for racing games. I don't know if they really induced in me the idea of competition. But I developed immense amount of patience and perseverance through these games.

All such games and toys made a definite space around me - a very human like, mechanical environment. Gijoes were a great way to understand anthropometrics and mechanix taught me structure. I think these toys contributed to a lot of my architectural knowledge. I still have all my toys, well preserved - to an extent that my parents are fed up of me. I don't share them with my nephews since they would immediately break them into pieces! Although some of them have been destroyed.

But I am going to try to theorize the above! It's just a descriptive account meanwhile. Somewhere, it does make me different from my brother's aggressive nature coming from his toys like the gun, or the bat, or the WOLF or DOOM he played on computer...Hence the Barthes connect...

Don't our toys shape us!? I have been wanting to pull the idea of toys in studio, especially since Prasad Shetty mentioned it last year to which I refuted. But I guess I am going to think about it seriously to be able to understand and derive newer expressions from the idea of toys and games...lets see...