108 Cards, 1 Broken Seat and 6 Brainies!

Amidst a generation where note books have been replaced by face book and scribbling on home walls have been replaced by posting on face book walls – here there is an ancient art still active and alive on the Bangalore roads – P l a y i n g  C a r d s !

It’s 6.P.M. The running race day is over. The worn-out souls are seated inside the campus shuttle bus and time starts to wander cluelessly on the Bangalore roads before they give a big sigh of having found their homes! But as an antidote, came to us – this pack of UNO! Yes, this post is all about our everyday UNOing  during our bus travels.

108 Cards: A pack of UNO cards! You know what UNO is? Better know before you read on 😕

Broken Seat: A dusty local BMTC bus fighting against the city traffic at a peak hour – moving an inch per minute, jerking 2 sideways per minute, 2 upways per minute, 2 frontways per minute – What! Are we crazy to think about playing c-a-r-d-s inside this bus 😯

We were! That’s why we introduced the concept of the broken seat here. It’s simple. Break the back most seat, place it across the adjacent seats blocking the passage and here – Our table is ready 🙂

6 Brainies: Actually, 0 brain is required for this game. Nonetheless, come, get introduced to our brainies 🙄

1. The Captain:Not only because the pack belongs to him but also because the whole idea of the play, the broken seat (including the breaking of the seat) is his. I tell you, this guy is fond of human beings. He begs and pleads every single soul in the bus to play with him. Thankfully he hasn’t targeted the driver yet 😐 And mind it, honesty is his worst policy. Once he told me “It’s ok to call me a dog but not Gandhi”. I thought like many of my other friends, he too is a Godse club fan. But that’s not everything. Cheating is a part of his game and that’s what makes him an anti-Gandhi 😉

2. The Hero aka Zero? A fellow passenger has an headache. His blood rushes with love, his huge eyes pop out in pain, he stops the bus and gets an anacin 😡 Yes! Any problem for anybody in the bus – you can file a petition to him and it will be attended ASAP. No matter what it takes to, even if he has to land up in a police station. But when it comes to UNOing, many times he ends up being a zero 🙁

3. The Satyameva Jayate: Yatha Yatha Hi Dharmasya…….You see whenever righteousness wanes, for the protection of the good, he comes into being age after age. And he is strict in this – it’s better to end up a loser than a cheater. So he concentrates on his cards and HIS cards only that most of the times he doesn’t even watch the cards being played 😯

4.The Rajinikanth: He even gets into the bus in Rajinikanth style. It becomes time for our bus to leave the campus, all the other brainies are seated already and the bus has started moving – And there comes he…….running…. running….one foot inside….one foot in the air….. chewing his orbit and YES! He’s there with all his huge white teeth smiling at us (Yes, yes, like that cow in the orbit ad :lol:).

5. The Record Holder: Gravity is all a myth with this girl. One break – her head hits the rod and she screams AMMA. Another break – her shoulders gets hit and she screams KRISHNA. Sometimes we feel like slapping her and place a paper weight on her head to make her stay fixed 😮 But she is good at one thing – creating records! Records of picking the highest number of cards, of getting skipped for 4 rounds, of losing with a 4+ card in hand…….excuse me, the girl is me! And it feels insane to pull my own legs – wish somebody creates a Nandhini calling Nandhini 👿

6. The Lady Ghajini: She was the youngest to learn the game and believe me she is a queen in finishing the game first. No, not by cheating! She is highly devoted to the game. She stays fixed with the same legs crossed for an hour. And she does no extra movements (unlike the record holder 😥 ). But she has a short-term UNO loss – one is supposed to scream “UNO” when left with a lone card – and that’s when the Lady Ghajini in her gets activated 🙁

OK. Let’s start the game now!

6.15 p.m

The first 2 brainies take charge of setting the game table. As soon as the cards are distributed, the peeping toms in the captain and the record holder lift their eyebrows and at a glance spy to whom the big 4+ and 2+ cards have gone to. (Unfortunately, both these have an insane bad luck in getting these cards in their own hands 😆 ).

Well, the first few rounds pass pretty much cool like this ➡ 2 – 5 – 8 – 8 – 6 – 9 – 0 – 2 – 4 – 4 – 4 – 4 until someone (usually the satyameva jayate or the lady ghajini) screams a UNO.

6.20 p.m

The hero aka zero now alarms an attack mode and the UNO candidate gets terribly attacked by a series of 2+s and 4+s. Woooo….. the fire picks up, lot of skip and reverse modes, hell a lot of strategies, assaults, offenses leading to happy attacks of 2+s and 4+s.

Now slowly this record holder leaks a biscuit packet and diverts every body’s attention to the eating mode. Yet another slap-deserving act of her’s 😈 Especially the Rajinikanth’s see food-eat food strategy gets triggered and he starts following the biscuit packet more closely than the cards 😆

6.30 p.m

The last 2 survivors are on a one-on-one now and with other’s impatience, it soon comes to a close. Well, there are no breaks (the captain can absolutely waste no time in breaks). The next game begins.

Well, this is so little a description of the game as compared to the fun we have in reality. But I should tell you all that it got us rid of stress at the end of the day. It got us distracted from thinking and re-thinking the same old problems in life for an hour. It got us explode some hearty laughs. It got us feel good about the little cheap cheatings. It got us pride in winning and sporty in losing.

And the best is that it got us a whole new meaning of making relationships with faces who are total strangers, who do not work with us, who do not live with us – just that they share the same path in our journeys for an hour. I am glad this happened to us and thankful to all the brainies.

Small things that bring big joys!!!

And what’s the message to the readers?

Buy a UNO pack and start playing 😆

Photo Courtesy:

All the brainie characters – www.onepiecewallpaper.net

Dogs Playing Cards – www.kcstap.net