Answer and explanation:
Ravi is a character in the short story "Games at Twilight", by Anita Desai. His name, as well as his siblings' names - Raghu, Mira, and Manu are the ones mentioned - already hint that the kids probably belong to a different culture, other than the American one. It is also mentioned that their mother takes a bath and then wears a fresh sari, which is known as a traditional piece of clothing in the Indian culture. Those hints, combined with the way the house and yard are described - big house, veranda, garage, shed, garden -, along with the scorching weather, may serve to indicate the setting of this story is in India. More specifically, a suburban area. We may also assume this family is quite wealthy to afford such a big house as well as the employees they keep.
Ravi is playing hide-and-seek with his siblings when he decides to hide in the shed where old furniture and broken things are kept. He is excited about the idea of winning the game, picturing himself as a champion who got to win over older, smarter kids. After hiding for hours, he comes out and runs to the "den" to become the desperate winner of a game that had been long over. His siblings had forgotten about him.
Ravi goes from the state in which an ambitious dream had left him to feeling unimportant. At first, he cries and refuses to not be acknowledged. Then, with his heart aching, he's forced to accept his little importance and, no longer crying, he is "silenced by a terrible sense of his insignificance." His experience is not unique to his culture, though. Children often dream of receiving attention, of being perceived as special, of being missed by those they treasure. It is quite a shock to any child when they are forgotten by a sibling or a parent, and it does happen more often than not. If a mother, for instance, forgets to pick her kid up at the proper time from a class, that can mean the end of the world, especially for smaller kids. They do not see it as a trivial incident, but as if that meant they are not special at all.