The Constant Gardeners – Our Farmville Tale

 

As I have mentioned before in this space, games have played a major role shaping sensibilities. The games added more variety in my life or in our life to be precise. Living in a land where the scope of entertainment is limited and restricted games helped us to remain in touch with the imagination. It all started with computer games and slowly it progressed to Play Station Portable games. The discovery of the shop in  XXXX Mall with a wide range of PSP games made us explore the world of virtual games. Then Facebook happened and along with it happened Farmville. The game is  played by thousands of people all round the world. The game is kind of hot topic these days in the Internet.

 

This blog is about Farmville. It is divided into two parts. In the first part,  I will describe how we became ‘real’ farmers because of Farmville. The second part deals with the lessons that we can learn from Farmville.

Farmville made us think about the possibility of creating a farm in our flat. Some events  happened that actually made us swing into action. One Thursday we got some plants from the church (thanks to the lady) We got some pepper plants and other plants. It was like receiving a puppy or kitten, with great care and concern we brought them home. The next step was to find a place to plant them. Again it was a neighbourly turn from another lady who brought us empty yoghurt buckets.We also used modified plastic water cans to plant them. We felt immense joy and satisfaction once we completed the task of planting. I kind of added some more plants by bringing some from my college garden. A visit to the restaurant made us procure some money plant. We also learnt about a popular belief that money plant should be stolen not borrowed.  In the next step of expansion we were assisted by the kids in the neighbourhood who actively participated in the act of farming. This time we had the support of uncle neighbour who brought  bag of mud from his ceramic factory. Kids joined us in mixing ordinary soil and the mud. As of now we have 15 plants and we hope that the number will grow in the future. It also depends on how long we are planning to stay here.

Farmville is a lovely way to do some virtual planting. The game helps you in the following ways:

1. Not-so-bad-way to kill time.
2. Gives a Sense of Hope.
3. It helps us in creating a sense of time, valuable lessons in time management can be learned.
4. It creates a kind of eco sense. Planting trees will almost becomes a habit.
5. You will become a good Samaritan and you will start helping others in real life not just your Farmville neighbours.