Today's cruises in ships, ocean liners or motor launches offer you a mundane boat ride with probably being on the sea is the only thrill. But a sailing on the river is a totally different experience. In Sind it was all the more so because a boat ride on the daryah usually meanat on all day affair with time being spent an small islands or patans as they were called.

Once again it was the cultural influence of the period which lent that special touch which cannot be created at any cost. Boats were booked in advance everyone used to take a day off with song and music in the air. Hearts pounding with excitement, the fishermen used to use bamboo poles to row and also drive palo (a Sindhi fish delicacy) into the nets laid out to catch them. These huge gleaming fishes were then cooked in hot sand and eaten as lunch. For those of you who are connoseuirs of good food, you will know the taste of flesh cooked in earthern or clay vassels.

The men sitting on the sides, would behave like children, with their hands or feet in the water, boatmen singing sufi kalaams and romantic couplets thus rending a romantic fragrance to the air. These are experiences which many of today's generation will never experience for it was the sheer simplicity of these events which endeared them to you. No amount of luxuries can create that aura.

Apart from these there were other games like iteedakkar - a game similar to cricket but played with wooden sticks, vanjvati - played in teams with the goal being to get to the other side of the ground with the opposing team blocking them as obstacles; playing cards - rangavaar one of the most popular card games played on the basis of the colours, kabbadi - similar to what is played even today, etc.

Though most of these activities are omnipresent today in their modern day avtaars, the originality is lacking with commercialisation raising its head and western influences seeping in to the heart of our Sindhi culture. While reading the section on animal fight one may think that what is so unique about it ? Well then for that matter what so unique about it ? Well then for that matter what so unique about a matador fighting a bull? But yet one pays huge amounts of money to be seen in such events.