Chennai ladies bond over weekly game of Mahjong

Last weekend, the city hosted Chinese president Xi Jinping for an informal summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. During the period, an interesting story on how the first Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai visited Mahabalipuram in December 1956 surfaced. Everyone was curious about the city's connection with China during that period.

But what caught our attention is that a group of Parsi women has been meeting up at Madras Gymkhana Club in the city once in a week to play an ancient Chinese board game called Mahjong. The tile-based game was developed in China during the Qing dynasty and has spread throughout the world since the early 20th century. On a windy Wednesday noon, we met Dilnawaz Belgamvala and her three friends at the club for a chat and got to know more about how the game is being played.

“Generally, Mahjong is played by four players at a time, but there are some variations in other countries. It's a game of skill, strategy, and calculation and involves a degree of chance. My mother used to play it and I learned the game from her. I’ve been playing Mahjong from the age of 16. This was a very common entertainment amongst army wives," says 64-year-old Dilnawaz Belgamvala, one of the players.

They have been religiously playing the game for more than 40 years at each other’s houses. To make it more convenient for the members, they decided to meet up at the club every Tuesday. “We have fixed for a regular Tuesday meet-up. But if one of us is busy with some work, we postpone it to Wednesday,” she smiles.

There are many theories and legends about Mahjong's origins. A popular story is that Mahjong was created by the famous Chinese philosopher, Confucius.They started playing the game and we curiously watched them moving the tiles in a swift manner. Each tile has different characters or symbols on them — there are pictures of rings, bamboos and cracks.

“Though the format of the game is the same, we play it in a different manner than the game played in China. There are more tiles combinations in our mahjong games and the player has to create certain sets of tiles to win,” one of the members says.

Earlier this year, hard-core board gamers in the city had a special reason to rejoice. Chennai got its first board game lounge in Gandhi Nagar and ever since the place was buzzing with gaming activities.

Dilnawaz tells us that though the game is predominantly played by the members from the Parsi community, a few from other communities have picked up the game. "It's fun when we play with friends — we chat, socialise and spend some quality time, " she says.