P. G. Bhaskar :
WHEN I first came to Dubai in the early nineties, one of the things I used to get excited about was the raffle prizes that used to be displayed or advertised outside supermarkets (malls were still a rarity those days). A spanking new four-wheel drive. A flight back home perhaps, a gold bar or shopping vouchers.
All of them sounded good to me and I used to religiously collect coupons with every purchase, fill them up methodically – making sure my P.O. Box and phone numbers were legible – and gently slip them into the slit of those transparent plastic containers meant for the purpose.
There was a prayer on my lips and in my heart, a quiet conviction. Sure enough, it did happen.
During those days, Khaleej Times had a scheme whereby they would deliver copies of the newspaper to India during one’s holidays and I had opted for it. Glancing casually through the paper one day at home in Madras, my nerves jangled as I saw my name in the paper in an advertisement. A purchase of some audio cassettes (yes, such things did exist then and what’s more, were much sought after back home as gifts from visiting expatriates) had won us fifty grams of gold. I whooped and hollered and did a little jig. I knew, I just knew that this was just the beginning; a mere sign of things to come.
When my wife and I returned to Dubai, we shopped with a vengeance; only, of course, from supermarkets which had an ongoing promotion. While lady luck was smiling upon us, we meant to make the most of it.
Within weeks, we won another prize, a 500 dirham voucher at a boutique in town. Unfortunately, there was nothing available at the boutique for that amount and we ended up buying something at a significantly higher price. But the important thing was that our winning streak was continuing. Or so we thought. But it dried up shortly after that.
Several years of dedicated filling up of coupons and providing our phone numbers only increased junk mails and additional text messages. Soon, we gave up this fruitless, post shopping exercise at supermarkets.
But when Dubai Duty Free started its car promotion, it seemed like they had started it just for me. When the first few tickets yielded nothing, my enthusiasm ebbed substantially. But from to time, I’d meet someone who had won it (I even met someone who won it twice) so that potent mixture of greed and unjustified optimism kept raising its expectant head and urged me to keep buying. But no car headed my way and very soon, I was forced to acknowledge that the fifty gram gold biscuit, far from being the start of a bull run, had been a mere accident, an aberration.
But hope, Alexander Pope has said, reigns supreme in the human breast. It did in my case as well. When Duty Free introduced the million dollar raffle, a new thrill of excitement and desire surged in me. A million bucks! I liked the sound of it. I repeated it to myself a few times and found I liked it even more.
I decided to buy a ticket. “This is not for us. You will just be wasting it, as usual” my wife cautioned. But I was in no mood to listen. I could kind of feel that something good was about to happen. “There is a tide in the affairs of men” I said, quoting Shakespeare, “which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” And fortune was just what I was ready to be led to.
So I bought a ticket. A few months later, I bought another. And then, some more. I bought the first ticket from that box, the last one and some of those in the middle. I bought tickets in my own name and that of my wife’s. When our son was born, I bought one in his name.
Every time I get that email from Duty Free telling me that the winning ticket would be picked the following day, my heart gives a little jump. But the next day, it sinks even lower than usual when I’m informed that Thankappan Moin Kutty or George Filmeridis has walked away with my money. I’m still waiting. I still feel sure it’s on its way. But it’ll be nice if it would come while I still have the strength to spend it.
(P G Bhaskar’s latest book ‘Mad in Heaven’ is published by Harper Collins (India))
