It's the stuff of football gambling dreams when you place a bet of £100 on a team that carries 5000 to one odds and you walk away with £500,000.
There's no frightening risks there unlike the one a rich friend from the 'hood once took. It was the heyday of Ratan Khatri's Bombay Matka and for (let's call him) Ivor it was a sure thing. He had his own formula, like everybody did, that almost every alternate day's draws would be a 6 or 7 or 9. By doubling his bet money every draw it didn't come, he would collect at 9.75 to one, a hefty harvest. We envied Ivor but neither had the means not the guts to follow him since every once in 3 months or so he would end up putting Rs.10,000 on a single number which meant putting Rs.30,000 on the three. This was the late 60s when a comfortable salary for a middle-class family was 1,000 a month. The infrequent 10K bet would fetch him a net of 67,500 enough to buy a decent 2 bedroom flat in Colaba, one of the city's swank areas. But once and only once, Ivor got the worst lesson in compounding one could ever get. Neither 6 nor 7 nor 9 was drawn for almost 30 days. His family's resources were stretched and he had long since stopped doubling. He had even stopped looking at results written in chalk on the city's roads. Early on the 31st day morning, I peered out from my balcony saw the number seven and without brushing my teeth, ran to Ivor to give him the good news. He collapsed, swearing never to gamble again. Roland Francis Toronto.
