It’s that time of the year, when you get a little down
because you have no money to spend on a proper holiday. So a few weeks back, I
tried my luck in online bingo
and I won myself a few dollars to buy gifts and stuff for friends and family.
And it got me thinking about how much gambling is frowned upon
in our societies. I remember, as a teenager, we used to go to a disused stadium
in our little town, and play cards for money under the crumbling pavilion. The
most popular game was matatu, which I
think is played only in Uganda. Recently, someone developed
a software and you can play it online via Google, without having to worry
that askaris will pounce on you and
drag you off to jail. In those days, as the gang gambled away their pennies, a
couple of boys would be on the lookout. Being a football stadium, it was easy
to see anyone entering from a mile off, and we knew the faces of the askaris from the Municipal Council, so
it was easy to see danger long before it arrived, and we would flee to the
safety of the surrounding bushes.
Parents used to warn us against cards. They would scream stuff
like ‘Don’t play cards or else you will become a muyaye.’ Bayaye are brats,
spoilt kids, petty thugs who roam the streets looking for a chance to
pickpocket. But I loved the card game, and I especially loved the
thrill of making and losing money by chance. I was often lucky, both in cards and other
gambling activities. I remember playing the lottery game JADA Scratch for Cash a
few times, and I often won something. Sadly, I’ve never hit the jackpot.
Why is it that cards got such a bad image? There were many
ways to gamble. We sometimes would use bottle tops (a game called ‘peke’, where
you dig a hole in a ground and stood several feet away. The one who threw in
the most tops won). The prize would not be money always. Sometimes we gambled
for mangoes, or books, or pens. When adults found us playing these other games,
they would never yell at us to stop. Today, I see youth gambling through pool, Ludo
– both of which have become so popular you find a gang of idle youth playing them
on every street – and mweso. No one
will frown when they see you playing such games, but the moment you are caught with
cards, it’s a police case.
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| Youth playing pool by the roadside in a Kampala suburb |
In Nepal, gambling is deeply ingrained in the culture, and
playing cards is so popular that you find a deck in every office, especially
those in rural towns. During tea breaks, or when there is no electricity, or at
the slightest excuse, they will play a game of cards. It has become something
of a religious ritual during the famous festival, Tihar, when families reunite
in ancestral homes and when friends gather – it’s like Christmas, only that it
is nearly a whole month of Christmas. A whole month of idleness, of
festivities, of drinking, and of gambling. It is hard to think of Tihar without
cards, just as you cannot separate Carols from Christmas.
They play the game anywhere. In offices, in living rooms, in
temples, in dark rooms, on the rooftops, in the balconies. I always thought it
made one of my favorite restaurants sexy, almost like a little illegal casino. This
was Shalom, in Rato phul (red bridge),
Danghadi town. It always had a haze of hookah smoke hanging above the tables
like mist in a horror movie scene, and pretty Magar girls walking around like Chinese
spies in a James Bond movie.
When the Moaist rebellion cropped up, they assumed the role
of moral guardians of the society. They banned gambling, and thus playing
cards, among other thing. They once attacked a village of hereditary
prostitutes, Munha, and beat up the girls whose only crime was to be born in the
caste of entertainers. Badi. Not many Nepalis liked this, for the Maoists were
attacking the very foundations of their cultures, beliefs that they had held
valuable for centuries.
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| Kathmandu nightlife. You get a feeling sometimes that Nepalis aren't welcome in some places. |
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| Maoists marching against something or the other. |
Today, Nepalis are not allowed into Casinos. There are about
half a dozen in Kathmandu, mostly based in five star hotels. I visited the
Radisson, and was welcomed with pretty girls who made me feel like Sean Connery.
I went with a Nepali friend, who loved to gamble, but who was afraid to go into
the casinos alone. ‘If I’m with you,’ he told me, ‘they will think I’m a
foreigner as well.’ He spoke heavily accented English, the kind Nepalis think
are English yet is really Nepali English. So at the entrance, I did all the
speaking. They let us in without trouble. However, Nepalis normally wouldn’t find
it difficult to enter these casinos, for the casinos have to make money and
will look away if a national walks in. But when the police raid the place,
which they often do, they pounce on anyone who they think is a national and
whisk him away to jail. But this friend knew if he was in the company of a foreigner,
the police would not touch him. Indeed, in our night at the Radisson, he told
the cops who interrogated him, ‘I’m merely his driver. He invited me in for a
drink.’ The cops left him alone, and he
won a tidy sum that night.
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