Nira kali

NIRA a play
The entire morning we sat in our own home. The heavy rain from last night continued. It was boring . How long can I play with my brother alone. Moreover, he being older I was supposed to obey him and I never liked that idea. I was five years old. But then he was only seven.
We sat in the veranda. Chettan looked at the sky and said, “We should play once again”. Actually I call my brother by his name -Bhas and not Chettan. My eldest brother Ittattan (Karun) tried a lot to make me call him Bhaskaran chettan. Because in my place the custom is we should call our elder brother chettan and elder sister chechi. But it never happened and even now I call him by his name.
Chettan took his slate-board and placed it between us . He drew a rectangle with two diagonals using a chalk.
“May I draw?”.He did not reply. I knew he will not allow me to touch that chalk. He got it from one of his friends. He was so popular among the village children that everybody walked behind him like they were his tail. That made me jealous sometimes.
I shifted my posture. There were few ants on the floor. I blew them off. This time I did not kill them. I was afraid I may fail in the play. Our floor was polished with cow dung. My mother Paru( people called her Ashatty since they called my father Naran Ashan) used to polish the floor once in a month. Since we did not own a cow she collected the cowdung from our neighbour’s house.
Our house was a small one. It was thatched ,with coconut palm leaves. There was a large room in the middle and two small slanting rooms on either side. The one on the right side was the kitchen. The one in the left was our study room. In our study room there was a wooden desk and bench . The house stood on four posts .The four sides and the rooms in between were mad e with ‘panambu ‘ made from bamboo. In my village most of the houses were like ours. Only a very few were made of red stones .
“I am hungry”, I complained. The steamed tapioca that I had eaten for breakfast had already digested.. “okay, only one more game” .
I placed my three small stones in my side front line. He placed three pieces of eerkili( sticks from palm leaves) in his front line.
“I will make the first move. Last play u made the first move,” and he moved his pawn.
“But you won the last game”, I grumbled and made my move. With just seven movements he placed all his three pieces in a nira in the diagonal. That was the end of the game. H e won the game..again.