“Try your luck! Try your luck!” the man kept repeating pleasantly, spinning the needle on his white cardboard wheel. He sat in an easy lotus position on the mud sidewalk beside the road, a small crowd of curious onlookers around him.

Anand looked at his watch, the one he had got on his eleventh birthday the week before. It was his father’s old watch and now his most prized possession. There was half an hour more for the school bell to ring. He joined the crowd around the man and elbowed his way to the front.

The game was simple, he found. Pay ten paise and put your money on any number between 1 and 12 marked on the wheel. If the needle stops at your number, you win a cone of peanuts.

Anand loved peanuts. A cone of peanuts cost the princely sum of fifty paise. The daily allowance he got was thirty paise, twenty for his bus fare to school and back and ten for an emergency. One good thing, though. He could spend the extra ten paise any way he wanted, no questions asked. Sometimes Anand would hoard his money for five days and buy a cone, or share one with a friend in three days, with five paise left over. It was hard going, but the peanuts were worth it. Crushed ice was easier to get, just twenty five paise a tumbler.

He used to envy some of the guys who used to be able to buy anything they wanted during recess. He wondered where they got all that money from. But then one day a line of red-faced dads were seen before the office, come to pay the school fees in arrears, which their wards had been casually diverting for months on afternoon splurges. They must have caught it at home. At least he didn’t have to go through that.

A man won a cone and walked off, munching on his prize. Anand couldn’t resist himself. He put his ten paise on the number 6. Someone had told him that six was his lucky number because his birthday was on the 15^th. The man spun the needle.

It spun round and round, passing Anand’s number at least five times before it began slowing down. Anand felt his stomach lurch. His mouth was dry.

The needle passed number 6 once again. It was almost crawling over the wheel now. It was now on twelve and beginning to stop. The contestants urged it on to their selected numbers. Some uttered disappointed curses. Anand kept deathly still. His eyes were on the needle as it crossed 3, then 4. It almost came to a stop on 5 and ever so slowly, came to a standstill on 6.

A wave of exhilaration swept through Anand. He whooped and reached out for his beloved trophy. The man gave it to him. As his fingers closed the newspaper cone, a heavy hand fell on his shoulder.

Govindan Sir. Malayalam Teacher par excellence, Holy Terror of pre-adolescents. The man who knew no mercy. Cruelty personified.

Anand was marched all the way to school and to the staff room, incriminating evidence in hand. None of the other teachers were around yet. Govindan Sir made him stand in a corner for a few excruciating moments before beckoning him to his desk.

“Do you know what a bad thing you have done?” he asked, staring coldly into Anand’s eyes, scorching his very soul.

“Yes, Sir” Anand murmured, though he didn’t, really.

“Gambling is a vice, boy. We can’t have you squandering your parents’ money like that”

Anand felt the fear rising in him. “Please don’t tell them, Sir” he pleaded “I will never do it again”

“Should I tell the Principal then, I wonder” Govindan Sir said, almost to himself. Anand quailed. If anything, Malathi Madam was even more sadistic than this man.

“Do we have to, Sir?”  Knowing his tormentor well, he quavered “Isn’t this something you can correct me for?”

Govindan Sir kept the stare going for a few minutes more. Then he opened his desk, extricated his cane, slowly rose and sighed.

“You know I hate doing this, boy…but I have to”

The cane rose and fell again and again. Anand felt the searing pain on the back of his thighs and buttocks. He struggled to keep from crying out. It felt like it would never stop.

His energy spent, Govindan Sir sent him on his way with a curt admonition not to repeat such things in future. As Anand walked out, blinking back his tears, from a corner of his eye he saw the teacher opening his cone of peanuts…

**

“Come on, Anand, we don’t want to be late!” Dinky said, admiring his tall, lean frame in the hotel mirror. As usual, he looked immaculate. His  navy blue suit looked perfect on him.

Anand was struggling with his tie. After all these years, he muttered to himself, you should be able to tie a double knot without the lower end hanging to your knees. He decided to make do with what he had achieved and donned his suit.

They were in Kuala Lampur, en route to Singapore for the International Rotary Conference. Praveen and Govind were in the next room, getting ready.

The plan was to go to Genting Highland, a casino in the hills. Someone had told them that you wouldn’t get entry if you weren’t in suits.

Anand liked his company, but he knew he just wasn’t in their league. These guys were seasoned travelers, while it was his first trip abroad. His first flight, actually. He grinned to himself as he recalled how scared he felt when it took off. But then he was a fast learner. He kept an eye on how his friends behaved and took his cue from them. No mishaps yet.

Dressed to the hilt in the humid climate, they drew amused looks from passers by as they boarded a cab to the cable station. They surveyed themselves in the cable car as it took them higher and higher up the slopes into Wonderland.

“We look like a bunch of gangsters anyway, so let us put on our sunglasses” Praveen joked.

The place was stupendous. An imposingly huge mall, stocked with everything under the sun. They rode the elevator to the top floor, where the casino was. A bouncer checked them for cameras and weapons and stood aside. He smirked as they filed past him.

The reason for the smirk became obvious as they walked into the dimly lit hall. Everyone else were in casuals. Bermudas, jeans, t-shirts, that was the normal attire. They looked like a group of professional gamblers. No matter, Anand thought to himself, this is a den of vice anyway.

Everywhere around them, people indulged in games of chance. Oriental, Occidental, Black, White, Yellow, Brown – people lounged in various poses and attitudes around a vast array of tables and machines. Anand’s friends took themselves off to different parts of the hall in search of their favorite games.

Anand set out to explore. He had decided not to play anything. He actually didn’t have the money for it. His finances were just enough to cover the hotel fares, transport and food. He had come for the trip solely because he felt he had to see some place outside the Country whose borders he had never crossed in his life, all thirty one years of it.

Slot machines whirred and hummed, sometimes sending a shower of coins into a mug eagerly held out by a lucky player. Card games were going on in various corners. Anand saw Dinky and Praveen at a table. What were they playing, he wondered. Baccarat? Poker? He tried to recall all the names of card games he had read about. All he knew to play was Rummy and he didn’t play it all that well.

It was the orange haired lady that attracted his attention to the crowd around a table. She was old and wrinkled, staring intently at something as she puffed away at a cigarette on a long holder. His curiosity piqued, he moved towards the object of her undivided attention.

A white ball clicked around inside a brown polished spinning wheel, bumping on its many cogs. Stacks of chips in different colours were in front of the people standing around it. The orange lady had a huge pile of them before her. A Chinese girl in a black suit stood erect at the head of the table, a long pole in her hand. Her lips were pursed in a straight line, as though she had never smiled since birth.

This must be roulette, Anand thought to himself. The game he had read a lot about. The game where fortunes were made and lost in minutes.

The wheel stopped. The orange lady uttered a loud epithet. The Chinese girl (the croupier, the word came to him from some recess of his mind), still unsmiling, used her pole (which had a flat shovel on its end) to pass a stack of chips to a young man who looked delighted with his lot.

It occurred to Anand that this game was more or less like the peanut wheel he had seen long ago, the one that got him a sore bum for his trouble. He found himself taking out a ten Ringitt note from his purse and extending it to the croupier.

“I am sorry Sir, you have to buy chips from the counter” she said, in a flat voice and pointed to a booth at the end of the room.

Someone sniggered. Feeling like a fool, Anand went to the counter and purchased chips worth a hundred Ringitts (he couldn’t look cheap now), muttered his thanks to the “Good Luck, Sir!” from the girl in the booth and walked back to the table.

Everyone placed their chips on different numbers in the panel on the table. The orange lady had a pile of them on 8. No one had chosen 6. He put fifty Ringitts there.

The croupier set the wheel in motion. As it spun around, he berated himself for being stupid. Play two games, lose your money and move on, he told himself. No more. You can’t afford even this.

The wheel stopped at 6.

Anand’s mind spun like the roulette wheel itself as the croupier pushed the stack in his direction. People were looking at him now. Someone muttered “Beginner’s luck”

Anand put a hundred Ringitt this time on 6. No one else joined him, the same number can’t win twice in a row. The wheel spun.

6 again. Anand’s pile was now bigger than ever.

He put half his pile on number 6 again. He knew he was crazy, but he couldn’t stop himself. The stares were becoming harder now, as if the players thought he had gone crazy.

This time, as the wheel began to slow down, he decided that he would stop, whatever happened. If his arithmetic was correct, he had won more than he had brought on the trip.

He won again. He stared at the pile before him, unable to believe what had happened.

He got up. All eyes were on him. He sat down again.

Without thinking about it, he put about a fifth portion of his winnings on 6 again. The orange lady looked at him, her face framed by the blue fumes from her cigarette. She put a pile of chips alongside his on 6.

The wheel spun. It slowed down at 5, crossed the line to 6. Anand could hear the orange lady drawing in a sharp breath. And ever so slowly, it crossed the line to 7 and came to a halt.

The run of luck was over. The orange lady was looking daggers at him. Anand rose, tipped the croupier a 100 Ringitt chip. She smiled. It made her look really pretty.

As he stood at the counter, waiting for the girl to give him his winnings in cash, he felt a heavy hand fall on his shoulder.

Half expecting to see Govindan Sir, he turned around to see Govind instead.

“You lucky chap! You seem to have made it big at roulette! How much did you make?”

Anand shrugged.

“Nothing much, man” he said. “Just… peanuts”.