So this thing happens every Thursday.
My dadi plays teen patti at this tea stall near our building. I know, sounds weird. She's 72 and she goes there with her friends and they play till like midnight sometimes. My mom doesn't like it but what can you do, dadi does what she wants.
I started going because I was bored. College was online for two months, remember that phase? I was going crazy sitting at home. My phone had this card game app and I got kind of addicted, not gonna lie. Played it all the time. Won some money once, like 2000 rupees, felt like a genius.
Then dadi saw me playing and said come on Thursday.
I thought it would be boring old people stuff. It wasn't.
First time I went, there were like 8 people there. Rajesh uncle who owns the stall, he doesn't even play, he just makes tea and sits there watching. There's Priya aunty who has the grocery shop downstairs from us. Dinesh chacha who I think is retired from some bank job. Few other people I didn't know.
They play for money. Not huge amounts but real money. 50 rupees boot, which means everyone puts 50 to start. Then it goes up from there.
I sat down and dadi dealt the cards. She deals really fast, like she's done this million times. Which she probably has.
My first hand was pretty good. Two aces and a king. I was thinking ok, this is fine, I know what to do. On my phone I'd bet big with this. So I put in 200.
Everyone folded.
Just like that. All of them.
I won 400 rupees and felt like an idiot. Dadi looked at me and shook her head but didn't say anything.
Next hand I got terrible cards. Something like 7, jack, 3. All different suits. Complete garbage. I was going to fold but then I thought, wait, maybe I should try something.
I put in 100 without looking at my cards again. Blind, they call it.
Priya aunty folded immediately. Dinesh chacha thought for a long time, then folded. This one new guy, I forget his name, he called.
"Show," he said.
I turned over my garbage cards. He had a pair of 10s.
Everyone laughed. Including me, because what else can you do. I just lost 100 rupees on nothing.
"Phone game teaches you bad habits," dadi said. That's all she said.
The thing is, after a few weeks, I started understanding what she meant.
On the phone, you just click buttons. You see cards, you bet, you wait 5 seconds, next hand. You're playing against random people, could be anyone, could be bots for all you know. Doesn't matter because you never see them again.
At Rajesh uncle's place, it's different.
Like, Priya aunty always touches her earring when she's worried about her cards. Always. Once I noticed it, I couldn't un-notice it. Dinesh chacha stops talking completely when he has good cards. Normally he's telling some story about his daughter or his old job or whatever, but when he has good cards, he goes quiet and just stares at the table.
And this one time, there was this new person, Harish from fourth floor. He kept biting his nails. He did it whether his cards were good or bad, so you couldn't tell anything from that. But his tea - he only drank it after he folded. If he was still in the hand, the tea just sat there.
These small things.
My phone app doesn't have any of this. It's just cards and numbers.
One Thursday, maybe two months after I started going, Dinesh chacha was playing really different. Usually he's careful, bets small, folds a lot. That night he was betting big on everything, even when he clearly had nothing.
Later I found out his daughter's engagement got cancelled. Nobody mentioned it at the table but everyone knew. And everyone was playing softer with him, letting him win small pots, not pushing too hard.
That's when I understood this isn't really about the cards at all.
The cards are just an excuse.
Last week something funny happened. I got three queens. Pure trip, which is really good. My heart started beating fast, like it does in the phone app when you get good cards.
I bet 300. Big bet for our table.
Dadi looked at her cards, looked at me, then raised to 600.
I thought, no way she has something better. Three queens is very good. So I called.
"Show," I said.
She turned over her cards. Pair of 6s. That's it.
I won. But the way she looked at me after, I realized she knew I had good cards. She was testing me or something. Seeing if I'd get scared. Or maybe she was just messing with me, I don't know.
"You're learning," she said.
Rajesh uncle's place is kind of dirty. The paint is coming off the walls, chairs don't match, one of them is broken but nobody bothers to throw it away. The light bulb keeps flickering, has been doing that forever. There's always mosquitoes after 9pm.
But every Thursday I think about it from Tuesday onwards. College is boring, my friends are all busy, phone app is just clicking buttons and watching ads.
Thursday night at the tea stall, I don't know, it's different.
Last Thursday I went and there were two new people. One was this IT guy from the next building, he kept saying he knows probability and card counting and all that. He lost everything in one hour.
Priya aunty took most of his money with a pair of 5s. He had better cards but she bet like she had the best hand in the world and he believed her.
"Probability doesn't work on people," Priya aunty told him after. "Only on cards."
We played till 11:30. My phone rang twice, I didn't check it. Someone was messaging me, probably my college group chat about some assignment. Didn't care.
Dadi won the most that night. She always wins the most.
When we were walking back home, I asked her how she knows when people are bluffing.
"You don't know," she said. "You guess. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong. That's why it's interesting."
My phone app has an algorithm. It shows you patterns, tells you odds, suggests bets. Very scientific, very smart.
But dadi's way is more honest, I think.
You just guess. You watch people. You try to understand them. Sometimes you get it right and sometimes you lose money on a pair of 6s.
I still play on my phone sometimes. During class, before sleeping, whenever. It's easy, it's fast.
But it's not the same.
At Rajesh uncle's place, when you win, people groan and laugh and call you lucky. When you lose, they make fun of you but in a nice way. Rajesh uncle makes tea between hands. Sometimes someone's phone rings and they take the call and everyone waits. Sometimes we just sit there for five minutes talking about nothing - Priya aunty's shop, Dinesh chacha's daughter, someone's car problem, whatever.
The cards almost feel secondary.
Almost.
I'm going again tomorrow. Thursday.
Dadi says she's going to take all my money this time. She probably will. She usually does.
But that's fine. It's not really about the money anyway.
Though I'm not telling her that. She'll just say something wise and then beat me at cards again.
