Another turn for ludo

It is supposed to be just one game.

Four friends sit around a Ludo board at a chai hotel, each insisting they don't have the time to spend the entire evening here. A game, a cup of tea and then everyone heads home. That is usually the plan.

Forty minutes later, somebody has won and the plan has already changed.

The losing side wants another game. The winner doesn't mind. Someone calls it a rematch, somebody else suggests making it a best of three, and another round of chai is ordered. By now, people sitting at the neighbouring tables have also started paying attention.

This is how an ordinary weekend tea ends up stretching much longer for Najam, Unaib, Shehzad and Saad. “We always start by saying we'll play one match,” says Najam. “But when someone loses, obviously he wants another one. Then it becomes a best of three. One game can take around 40 minutes, so once you start, you don't realise how much time has passed.”

The four friends weren't always Ludo regulars. Until around four months ago, their weekend routine was much simpler. They would meet at the same chai hotel, order tea, sit for a while and catch up. When the cafe started offering customers a choice of games, including cards and Ludo, they picked the one none of them needed to learn.

Everyone, they reasoned, has played Ludo at some point. It didn't take long for the board to become part of their weekend.

Playing on a phone, they say, doesn't quite work the same way. There is no one sitting across the table whose token can be sent back home, no shouting when a six appears at just the right moment and, perhaps most importantly, far fewer opportunities to cheat.

“The real fun is when you cheat and the other person doesn't notice,” says Saad, laughing. “Maybe you move when it wasn't your number, or you don't kill someone's token and hope nobody notices.”

Usually, somebody does.

The arguments can get loud too. A player deliberately sparing a friend's token is enough to bring accusations of favouritism across the table. Losing brings its own problems, particularly when the winner decides to remind everyone exactly who won. “But once the game ends, we're friends again,” says Shehzad.

For them, Ludo started as something to do while drinking chai. They are hardly alone. Across Karachi, boards that were once mostly pulled out at home during family gatherings can now be found lying on the tables of roadside dhabas, traditional Quetta hotels and newer chai cafes. Some places provide them themselves; at others, customers have been bringing their own boards for years.

And sometimes, what begins as a way to pass the time over chai becomes the reason to stay for another cup.

From Chai to Ludo

For Muzammil Hassan, a Ludo board is also good for business.

At his chai cafe in Gulistan-e-Johar, there are around 50 seats spread across 10 tables. Four Ludo boards are kept for customers, along with four sets of cards. There is chess and a selection of other games too, but Ludo and cards are the ones his staff are asked for most often.

The games were part of the plan when the cafe was set up. Muzammil wanted something similar to the atmosphere of a traditional Quetta chai hotel, where people could sit for longer rather than simply order tea, finish it and leave. His version is a little more organised and premium, but the idea came partly from watching what was already happening at older chai hotels.

“We had seen people at traditional Quetta hotels bringing their own games and sitting there playing while having tea,” he says. “And it wasn't only young people. Older people would bring Ludo and other games as well. That's where we got the idea that instead of people bringing their own boards, why not provide the games ourselves.”

There is no charge for asking for a board, and Muzammil cannot say with certainty that customers choose his cafe because of Ludo. But he has noticed something about some of the groups who have become regulars.

They ask for the board before they ask for the menu. “They come in and the first thing they'll say is, 'Ludo dena',” he says. “Then they start playing, order their chai and food and continue with the game.”

For a chai cafe, there is an obvious advantage in that. A customer having one cup of tea may not occupy a table for very long. Four people caught in a close game are different. As one match becomes a rematch, another cup is ordered, then perhaps something to eat, and the table remains occupied.

Muzammil says he has seen the difference in orders. But he has also learnt that keeping customers at a table for longer isn't always helpful.

Weekends are the problem.

When the cafe is full and other customers are waiting, a Ludo game can hold up a table long after the plates and cups have been cleared. Asking four players to leave in the middle of a best of three is unlikely to go down particularly well either.

“Even after they've finished their food, they'll keep sitting because the game hasn't finished,” Muzammil says. “So, during rush hours on weekends, we don't offer Ludo. If we have enough tables available, then we'll give them the board.”

There is another problem that comes with it. Not everyone takes losing particularly well.

Arguments occasionally become loud enough for the staff to step in. Muzammil has tried to deal with that by keeping those who want to play towards one side of the cafe and customers who have come for a quieter cup of tea on the other.

“If the argument gets too much, we tell them to go outside, settle whatever they want to settle and then come back,” he says, laughing.

Despite the occasional trouble, he has no plans to get rid of the boards. If anything, he sees more cafes doing the same. New chai and coffee places are increasingly keeping cards and board games for customers, something he believes gives groups another reason to sit together without everyone disappearing into their phones.

But the idea of playing Ludo over chai did not begin with the newer cafes. Long before Muzammil put four boards on his tables, customers at traditional Quetta hotels were already arriving with boards of their own.

Before the Cafes caught on

At Qadeer Khan's Quetta chai dhaba in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, nobody quite remembers when the first Ludo board appeared.

It has been years, Qadeer says. Long enough for the game to become part of the place and for him to have replaced more boards than he can remember.

In the beginning, he didn't provide them at all.

Customers would arrive carrying their own Ludo boards, find a table and settle down with friends. The hotel provided the chai and the space; the customers brought their entertainment with them. Some stayed long enough to order several rounds of tea and food, while others standing nearby would begin watching the game even if they weren't playing.

What Muzammil discovered while setting up a newer chai cafe, Qadeer had learnt years earlier. “We saw that it was benefitting us because people would sit here and keep ordering chai and other food,” he says. “Even other people would come, not to play by themselves, but to watch them playing. So, then we started keeping the board games ourselves.”

They began with one Ludo board. It rarely remained free for long. When people started asking for another, Qadeer bought more. Cards were added as well.

Keeping the boards has come with its own running cost.

Tea gets spilled. Pieces disappear. And occasionally, a game ends badly enough for the board itself to become involved in the argument.

“Sometimes chai spills on it and sometimes, during an argument, people throw the board,” Qadeer says, laughing. “Then we have to buy it again. But I think it's worth it because it keeps the hotel lively and people keep coming here.”

Those arguments are not unusual enough for him to dismiss them entirely. Most games end without trouble, but Qadeer says some players take Ludo far more seriously than someone watching from another table might expect. A disagreement over a move can turn into an argument and, occasionally, something more, leaving his staff to calm everyone down.

Earlier, he remembers mostly older men sitting around the boards. They would arrive with friends, order their tea and play. More recently, younger customers have begun joining them.

For Qadeer, the appeal has less to do with Ludo itself than with the kind of space a chai hotel provides.

“I think it's the nature of a chai hotel,” he says. “People come here to relax, have tea and spend time with their friends. A lot of friends don't get the chance to meet at each other's homes, so this becomes a common place where they can meet freely, sit together and talk.”

There are conversations he would rather they didn't have. Political arguments, in particular, can become just as heated as a disputed Ludo move, and Qadeer says the hotel tries to discourage them.

Give those same customers a board and four coloured sets of tokens, though, and there is usually something else to argue about.

For Qadeer, that is part of what keeps the place alive. And while Ludo may still be thought of as a game played at home with family, he suspects the board has found an equally natural home beside a cup of chai. “I think now it might be played at chai hotels even more than it is played at home,” he says.

When ‘timepass’ gets serious

For Najam and his friends, playing among themselves was enough in the beginning. Then they noticed another group.

They had seen them at the chai hotel several times, sitting around another Ludo board and playing with the same regularity. Eventually, watching from separate tables wasn't enough. A challenge was made.

Each group picked two of its better players and agreed on a best-of-three. There was no trophy, entry fee or cash prize waiting at the end, but playing only for bragging rights didn't seem enough either. So, they settled on something readily available at a chai hotel: the bill.

“We don't play for money,” says Unaib. “But when we played against the other group, we decided that whoever loses will pay for all the tea served. And everyone has at least one tea during a match, sometimes two, so by the end of a best of three or best of five, that's a lot of tea.”

It was hardly a professional tournament, but the instinct to turn a casual game of Ludo into a competition is not entirely new in Karachi.

In December 2011, Royal Rodale Club organised what was billed at the time as Karachi's inaugural Ludo tournament. The knockout competition brought 42 players to 12 tables, with cash prizes and trophies on offer. Fourteen-year-old Shahveez Javeri eventually won the competition, defeating Ali Ahmed in the final. The organisers had initially expected more than 100 participants and, despite the smaller turnout, spoke afterwards about making the tournament a regular event.

Javeri's reaction after winning also summed up one of the complications in trying to treat Ludo as a serious competitive game. He credited his victory, at least partly, to luck.

That argument has followed Ludo for as long as people have rolled dice. Unlike chess, a player cannot control what number appears. A six at the right moment can change a game; a run of low numbers can leave even an experienced player waiting. But the dice do not make every decision. Players still choose which token to move, when to leave the safety of home, whether to chase an opponent and when taking a risk is worth it.

Karachi never appears to have developed the kind of regular, visible tournament circuit that the organisers of the 2011 competition had hoped for. Yet competition has hardly disappeared from the game.

It has simply remained far less formal.

There may be no referee standing beside Najam and his friends, no trophy waiting at the end and no official record of who won. But put two regular groups around the same board, give them something as small as a night's chai bill to play for, and a game usually dismissed as timepass suddenly starts being taken rather seriously.

More than four players

A Ludo board is technically meant for four players. At a chai hotel, it doesn't always remain that way.

People sitting nearby look over when a game gets close. Someone waiting for his order stops beside the table. Friends who aren't playing begin following the moves, and before long there are more opinions around the board than there are people actually rolling the dice.

Najam and his friends have become used to it. What begins as their game can quickly attract an audience, with people they don't know choosing a player to support and reacting to what is happening on the board.

That is also what they feel is missing when the same game is played on a phone.

Digital versions have made it possible to play Ludo without carrying a board, finding three other people or even sitting in the same room. But for the four friends, convenience isn't necessarily the point. At the chai hotel, much of the entertainment comes from everything happening around the game, the noise from the table, teasing between friends and the reactions of people watching.

“Playing on the phone doesn't give you the real feeling of Ludo,” says Saad. “Playing at home with family is also different. Here we are loud, and other people around us get involved too. They pick sides and start supporting you.”

Muzammil has noticed a generational difference in how the game is played. At his cafe, students and younger customers are more likely to choose cards, while the physical Ludo boards are particularly popular with millennials, families and older customers. That doesn't mean younger people have stopped playing Ludo altogether. He believes many have simply shifted their games onto their phones.

At the traditional chai hotel, however, the physical board has survived partly because the hotel itself serves a different purpose. It is somewhere to meet.

Perhaps that is why Ludo fits so easily on these tables. It requires little introduction, the rules are already familiar to most people and a new player can take a seat without having to learn much before the dice are handed over.

The phone may have made Ludo easier to access, but at the chai hotel, access was never really the problem. The attraction is having the other three players sitting across the table, and, every now and then, several more standing behind them with absolutely no intention of keeping their advice to themselves.

One more game

By the time the cups begin to empty, nobody around the Ludo board is keeping much track of how long they have been sitting there.

There is always a reason not to leave just yet. A loss needs to be avenged, a win needs to be proved again, or somebody is convinced the last game would have ended differently had the dice been kinder.

Around them, the chai hotel carries on. Waiters move between tables, new customers take their seats and another kettle makes its way out of the kitchen. At one table, though, four coloured sets of tokens are being arranged back at their starting positions.

The board that once came out of a cupboard at home has found another place to stay.

And despite what the players may have told themselves earlier in the evening, apparently there is still time for one more game.