Cut the Cake

Riding through Chennai traffic while your running late can be quite a spiritual experience. Powering through that traffic light just before it goes red, overtaking that slow Mercedes – I mean you could have bought a Nano if that was what you wanted to achieve on the road, loser! In between all of this cutting and extreme over taking I’m reminded of a game we used to play as kids. A game that involved a lot of running, chasing and most importantly, selflessness. It was called, Cut the Cake.

Most games we played back in the day were very Darwinist in their makeup. Hide n Seek involved you hiding until ‘you’ are caught; you really didn’t care what the rest were doing as long as you were neatly hidden away. Catch n Catch aka Chor Police would mean there are a bunch of chasers and a bunch of chasees, if I may be given the liberty to coin my own word, and the games would begin. There was Crocodile, there was Red Letter, Dark Room and the list goes on. Now unless you really wanted to impress that girl with the cute ponytail and delicious tiffin, you didn’t really care a damn about anyone else as long as you were safe. But then all of a sudden in between this selfish desire to never be caught, someone would suggest, ‘Cut the Cake’. Now this is how it was played – You would have a chaser who would cease to become a chaser the moment he catches any of the chasees (thus, this word has been patented by me). Now the only way the chasees^TM can pile on the misery for the chaser is to cut the cake. This means, that a chasee^TM needs to run in between the chaser and the person he is chasing, the moment a chasee^TM does that the chaser has to change track and start chasing the chasee^TM  who just cut the cake. Its phenomenal because you can quite easily just stay away from trouble and never cut the cake but every once in a while is born a hero who will go and cut the cake and help his fellow chasee^TM out. This selflessness instantly spreads like an infection and suddenly the band of chasees^TM realize that the ultimate joy is in making that one chaser regret ever mentioning the idea of playing the game.

Now I’m not going to connect the above paras because there is no connection. Just that cutting through the traffic reminded me of cutting between the chaser and chasee^TM back when i was young enough to play this game. But this very inherent contradiction that was ingrained in us right at that age has always fascinated me. It amazes me, the lessons we have learnt when we were so young that subconsciously always will define us. I’m looking for more ideas and thoughts on these. Looking at building more stories, thoughts on humanity and the makeup of life through games we played when we were young. So let me know and let me collect these thoughts and present this better.

Until then, anyone for ‘Cut the Cake’?