Delhiwale: Mirdard’s carrom players

The small room is just wide enough to fit in a small table and four chairs. The table is just wide enough to accommodate a carrom board.
This entire setting in Khwaja Mirdard Basti makes for a kind of cozy distraction from daily life. The congested ‘hood near the Barakhamba Road flyover has streets so narrow that many of them don’t get any daylight, forever doomed to cold damp darkness. The area has no playground, no park, no open space.
This afternoon, in the tiny carrom board club, four Mirdard dwellers are absorbed into a round of game, hitting the black and white carrom pieces into the corner pockets, aiming to win the game’s coveted red queen.
Sneaking out a brief break from the day’s work, one of the players is a manager in a capsule-making firm; he says he works from home. One is a book binder. One is an AC mechanic. The fourth player says he is bekaar, jobless. Others laugh. He is actually a musician, skilled in tabla.
Actually, all four men are musicians, they disclose. No surprise. Mirdard Basti is home to scores of families belonging to the so-called Mirasi community, whose male members would traditionally offer music in sufi shrines, among other places. The carrom club itself is named after a variation of the ‘Mirasi’ word; and was founded years ago by a neighbourhood grocer. It was initially located on another lane.
Truth be told, Delhi’s anonymous back-lanes and basements happen to be the most likely addresses of these secretive carrom clubs. They usually lie tucked within cramped localities such as Ballimaran, Pahari Rajaan, Jaffrabad, Seelampur and Majnu ka Tila. One reason could be that these areas don’t have enough open grounds for outdoorsy games.
Additionally, many of these one-room clubs exude a somewhat similar ambiance, no matter the locality. Low hanging lamp throwing an orange glow on the carrom’s plywood board, and the cloistered air smelling of boric powder (used for smoothening the board).
Sprinkling a bit of white powder on the board, here at Mirdard’s carrom club, the AC mechanic remarks that “playing carrom is so much better than wasting time on the mobile.” The book binder nods, saying, “You chat to each other rather than to somebody on WhatsApp.”
Even so, the four men soon stop chatting, concentrating on the game.
PS: The two of the players requested their names not be shared. The other two whose faces are visible in the photo are Riyaz and Sameer.