Lost Childhood
A cool evening breeze rustled through the balcony as Raghav scrolled through his phone, mindlessly swiping past endless reels of strangers dancing, mimicking dialogues, and showing off luxury vacations. He sighed. His eyes drifted towards the playground across the street—empty, except for a few kids hunched over their phones, lost in a digital world. His mind wandered back to a different time, a different world. A world without notifications, where childhood meant more than virtual likes and heart emojis. He could almost hear the crack of the bat against a rubber ball in the narrow lanes of his old neighborhood. Gully cricket wasn’t just a game; it was a battlefield where arguments over "out" and "not out" were settled by the eldest player, who acted as an unofficial umpire. "One-tip one-hand" was the rule when space was scarce, and broken windows were a rite of passage. Then there was gully danda, a game of sheer skill, where a wooden stick and a smaller...