Bluff, and other Stuff

Have you ever had one of those moments, when the Absolute Truth floats down with a double somersault, a couple of cartwheels and a full split, landing right on your nose, while the heavens open and glorious hymns reverberate, a moment that will define the rest of your life, and that of countless others?

Neither have I, actually. But I came close. As close as you can 17 km away from civilisation, anyway. We were playing Bluff, a small group of say 16 people. The weather had decided to play spoilsport, at around 5 in the evening, so you had a bunch of very pissed off young dudes, with energy to burn and way below ignition temperature, so to speak. The rain brought with it some very unwelcome little visitors, buzzing around the place and in general having a right ball. The music was blaring pretty loud… a stranger would even have thought the room was shivering given the weather. But then it would have to be a pretty strange stranger.

Bluff is a pretty simple game, really. It involves a great deal of nerve, risk management techniques and the coveted ability to lie through your teeth. In all, it is like the card game version of ‘Life’. Except that you didn’t have to decide if to send kids to the private school or buy a new car. And you didn’t have little, colourful plastic families (and their cars) around the place.

The game was going pretty much like most others. Genie and Deeps played a quiet, high risk game and got out quick, probably to scourge the room for snacks. Siva invariably got stuck with one card, almost everyone in the wing including the bathroom cleaners knowing which one. CV, of course, was making it a point to prove he could bluff. The rest were making it a point to prove he couldn’t. No prizes for guessing which side was winning. CV has the kind of poker face you see in one guy a generation. Eyes wide, eyebrows raised, a couple of gulps… and the absolute banishing of all eye contact. Some of us would swear that we saw his face arrange itself in the pattern of the card in his hand.

It was in such a condition that news found the entire gang, courtesy me.

“Guys!”

“…”

“We’re holding a cricket tournament da… my club”

“…”

“So form yourselves a team and get registered quickly…”

I should mention here that most of the guys are cricket crazy. In the fashion of most Indians. They loved playing, watching and talking about the game, with a passion most reserve for barroom brawls. The room would testify to this… Hanging Light – Sachin vs. Lara. Dent in Bed – Is Dhoni a phoney? Broken Mirror – Did Sourav score 183 or 183 not out. You get the picture. And me, being of saner disposition, would just sit there watching the ruckus unfold, playing peacekeeper.

Anyways, with a slight grunt, someone (must’ve been Siva, for some odd reason he didn’t like being picked on by twenty guys) put their cards down, the others quickly followed suit. Amazing though the game might be, we were all quickly boring of the sheer length of it sometimes. Besides, putting so much pressure on Siva n CV for entertainment pricked our conscience a bit. And so the team huddled, deciding the squad of fifteen. By my count, around eighteen were interested to play, which meant that some hard decisions had to be made, and the people concerned placated with some extra attention and numerous nods of the head. In around quarter of an hour, the squad was decided, and the team name was to be decided.

Since we were the first team to register, we stressed upon ourselves the importance of naming the team. The old school ‘PS XI’ was instantly dismissed, as It would spawn a ‘Northie XI’, ‘DAV XI’ and other similarly depressing names. Someone suggested ‘St. Mary’s Devils’, after the name of the ground the guys played in Chennai. The more conservative of the lot rejected it. The next was ‘Sarakku Irukku’, in honour of our very own ‘Sarukku’, NSK… he makes it a point to push any mattress he sleeps on to the ground, and then justifies it saying that all s fair in love, war and sleepiness.

Finally, we decided upon the highly innovative, “18 Till We Die”. The name struck a chord with most, seeing as we did make Room. 18 our joint… I did raise the slight problem of if we would be called the ’18 Till We Die’-ians or ’18 Till We Die’-ites or ’18 Till We Die’-anis. However, logic is misplaced in times of rapture, and as such, my words were drowned in the wave of emotion that was sweeping across the room.