It began with a deck of cards.

Amba took the alleyway behind her workplace, straightened her shoulders and the crick in her neck. Her job was to sell flowers, and her place of business was on a busy street. Sometimes, the sun beat down and wilted her flowers before her customers go to them. There are moments when her customers ignored her, no matter how hard she smiled at them.

The worst buyers were those who haggled. What did it matter, thought Amba, if she charged them a few rupees more? If Amba didn’t know better, she’d have called their antics daylight robbery. One young woman stood out among them though, Mira. She was one of those quiet customers who just paid what Amba asked of her. Amba liked her.

She stopped in the alleyway, under the shade of the buildings on either side, and counted her cash. Some coins and a few notes. She had enough to buy herself dinner. She made her way to the tea stall where gossip thrived and rumours were born, and sat down on a wooden bench. Someone brought her a glass of tea and a plate of steaming rice, curds, and a blob of whatever curry was being served that evening. She squinted at it. There were chickpeas and scarlet gourd mixed together. 

Well. She wasn’t one to complain, so she set down her basket and went to the small pipe behind the stall to wash her hands and face, and then she came back and began to eat. 

That was when she saw it, on the next table that had just been vacated. The tea stall had a grand total of three tables and six benches, and everyone knew everyone, so Amba hailed the owner of the stall.

“Murugan. Look there. Cards!” she said, and pointed. 

The owner shrugged in response. “It’s been there. Left overnight but nobody’s claiming it. Take it if you want. What will old Murugan do with it?”

“Old Murugan can stop talking in third person,” said Amba, with a mock glare, and he laughed. She took the cards and examined them. They were in an unmarked box, and rather old. Amba dropped them into her basket, and continued to eat.

When she was done, she began the trek back to her home. It was a lodge for people like her who lived on their own and returned at odd hours after their taxing jobs. Bricklayers, labourers, sweepers, flower sellers. Of the eight rooms across two floors, not one was vacant, and all the tenants were women. For safety, said the government who had built the rooms, but since its construction they’d given the building a wide berth. One caretaker, a surly municipal employee, collected rent every month from the tenants.

She entered her room, a small, dingy place, and sat down on the charpoy. It creaked and groaned and for a moment Amba felt herself unbalanced with the depression in the middle of the bed. There was a greasy bulb on the wall, and she turned that on now. It flickered to life, filling her cramped space with smoky light. Her room had barely enough space to fit her charpoy and a box with her clothes. Right under the window with shutters she’d placed a kerosene stove. To decorate, Amba had hung up seashells and strings of flowers over the door.

But those were inconsequential at the moment because Amba was curious about the deck of cards. She opened the box and emptied its contents on her bed.

She had gambled before, and she knew playing cards when she saw them. There were gatherings of women and men who played at night in seedy places, betting money and items of note.

She looked over the cards. Fifty-two, as was standard, four suits. The texture of the cards felt soft, and slippery, but the print on them was clear, with vibrant reds and blacks. 

And then…an extra card tumbled out of the box. Amba picked it up. It was a Joker, just one, but unlike any Joker she had seen before, for it was foiled and it shimmered in the light. He was dressed in a chequered outfit, sometimes purple, then gold, but if Amba tilted the card just so, he was in green. The bells on the Joker’s hat were silver, and his shoes, gold. His smiling expression seemed to focus on her face, as though he could see her.

Amba blinked. A soft, melodious laugh echoed in her mind, like a thought, followed by the tinkling of bells. 

That night, she dreamed of the Joker. She couldn’t exactly see him, but she knew he was there, sitting far away from her, or standing under a tree, or melting into the moonlight. He was a strangely radiant, liminal figure, and she could never quite catch a clear glimpse of him.

Amba awoke with a start right before sunrise. Her mind was a foggy mess of thoughts, and she could not get the Joker out of her musings. He was right there at the edges of her vision too, like a dream, and the bells tinkled with a sound only she could hear. Amba whirled around, but her room was empty except for her. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up, and Amba opened her windows, swept the floors, dusted the sills, and then, lit the one oil lamp she owned to ward off evil spirits.

She heard no more bells that dawn.

Amba took her basket to the farmer at the outskirts of town, collected her blossoms, paid the man, and took the flowers to her usual spot on the busy street. She rarely made a profit on these, she thought, not with customers haggling with her. That morning, the sun glowed scorching hot, blazing down on the asphalt of the street. Amba wiped her neck and brow, worried. In this heat, her flowers would wilt to mush even with her attempts to keep them fresh by sprinkling water and covering them with a damp cloth.

Then, she heard words in her mind that weren’t spoken, but more like tinkling of bells in a melody that sounded like speech.

Fresh flowers! Fresh flowers! They bloom if you play Twenty-Eight with thirty-two after sundown. Joker trumps Jack. Oh yes! 

Amba froze. She knew Twenty-Eight, that card game popular in her area. She’d played it, and she’d lost more often than not. She knew its rules. Still in a daze, she reached for the deck of cards. The Joker fell out, foiled and glittering, and he appeared to be sneering at her. And she also noticed that her deck only had thirty-two cards now, exactly right for Twenty-Eight. The sparkle of The Joker card, and the sheer temptation of playing Twenty-Eight again had her nodding before she even knew what she was doing.

What was she doing, exactly, selling flowers by sun and rain, buying them before first light in bulk, threading them into garlands, sprinkling water on them to keep them fresh? The answer came at once to her. Because she could not afford anything else, and she did not have a fancy degree. She did not have a school certificate. She could read a little, and had a head for numbers. She had learnt cards from watching her father gamble, many, many moons ago. But beyond her memories and grit? Life was an enigma.

The fragrance of her flowers jolted her out of the reverie, and Amba gasped. All her blossoms were now lustrous and fresh, as though they’d just been plucked. And the scents drew in customers; she had a crowd around her as the day went on. By sunset, she had an empty basket and more money she usually made.

Amba grinned to herself and stood up. She bought herself an elaborate dinner from the teashop, with extra portions to take home. She walked slowly, admiring the city for the first time. She noticed the streetlights, the illuminated signs over stores. Some of them were neon, some were simply boards. She stood and watched shopkeepers draw down shutters or lock doors. 

She returned to her room, replaced her basket, changed and set out into the night. Her days were, at the best of times, filled with anxiety. The life of a flower seller always hinged on that extra rupee. But tonight, her anxiety was of a different kind. she tried to sleep and dreamed, constantly, of an unseen Joker. She heard the bells and his voice in the winds of her dream. Amba tossed and turned, but the Joker’s laugh haunted her.

She awoke sometime around midnight with a fire burning in her heart, and a strange pull towards the alleys of the cardsharps. Amba picked up the deck of cards, and sauntered out into the night. She took a sharp turn and ducked into a warehouse, and then marched up to a locked door at the back. She waited. A bolt creaked, and a woman looked out. 

Amba held up the deck. “I’m here to play.”

The woman frowned. “And you have a token? You need one to come in.” 

Amba hesitated. She had no token. She thought she heard spectral laughter in her head.

Something must have shown on her face, as the woman at the door sighed. She let Amba into the room anyway, handing her a worn plastic chip with a mark engraved on it. “Your token,” was all she said.

Amba looked about her. The room was oblong with windows overlooking dark lanes, and there was smoke from lit kerosene lamps. A tubelight shone white on the far wall, struggling to keep up with the lamps and the silence. For there was silence, and many tables, where men and women played with cards. They were people like her, forged from the fire and wind of rough lives. Callused hands, hardened expressions, tanned skin. They were the kind of individuals who learned through sorrow and the grime of work their employers wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do.

The philosophy of it did not concern Amba at the moment. She found a table and sat down. She knew her opponents slightly, but that did not deter her. 

“I have a deck,” she told them, two men and a woman. 

The game began. Amba wasn’t an expert, but the Joker’s chuckles rang like music that she alone could hear. The cards sparked something in her, something primeval and eager. 

She wanted to win. She returned to play, night after night.

At first, her games were mediocre and she wasn’t quick enough to notice the skill of the cardsharps. The more she lost, the more bizarre her dreams became. The Joker taunted. Then, Amba began to turn her luck around.

These were little wins. They got her cooking utensils, a cushion, and a tiny, ancient radio. She lost her futon in the bargain. She also lost her chair. But Amba continued. The only way to stop the Joker’s derision was to play. Each night, every night, until the roosters crowed.

By daylight she still gathered and sold flowers. She was too tired from the lack of sleep to focus on her work. She did not notice when customers, taking advantage of her exhaustion, paid her less than half and walked away triumphant. It was only at eventide, when the sun burned golden orange, did she realize that she’d been shortchanged.

And still, the cards called to her.

Amba tried to resist their pull. She took her time that evening. She ate rice and lentils at the teashop slowly. Then she took the long way home. The tug and pull towards her cards grew stronger with each step. She thought, for a fleeting moment, that she saw the Joker standing at an intersection, under a streetlamp, grinning. 

Amba grew tense but stood her ground until the pull became unbearable. She rushed home, changed, and went out to play, cards held to her chest like a precious thing.

The night passed with all the speed of sludge. Her losses were disproportionate and she could not shake off the alien glee coursing through her body. That mocking mirth wasn’t hers, and she knew it. 

For fear of the laughter, she spent all night playing. For fear of the sneering, she did not stop. For fear that she was losing, she played just one more game.

By daylight, when she stepped out of the building, she was exhausted and disoriented. She skipped food and her flowers, and slept the day away. She heard bells like echoes in her dreamscape. Amba awoke suddenly, and reached for her cards. She could not throw it out. There was an ache in her chest when she tried to fling it out the window, and her lungs began feeling crushed.

The pain lifted when she kept the cards beside her, and the wind carried with it echoes of derisive glee.

That night, she lost again, and her savings were gone. She won some, but they were merely enough for a meal at the teashop. On the fifth day, she lived for the cards. She ate sporadically. The cards called to her. The Joker danced in her nightmares and she could never actually see him. Amba lost weight. Her hair turned frazzled. Her clothing unkempt.

She tried, again and again, to get rid of the cards. They were glued to her.

A week later, her customers noticed that she wasn’t at her usual spot. They made enquiries about Amba the flower seller, but nobody knew where she was. A concerned customer, the young woman named Mira, decided to find out where Amba lived and make a house call. But Amba’s room was empty, and musty with disuse. Dust coated the furniture, and the windows were shuttered. 

Amba was nowhere in sight, and her rent was due.

Mira paid off Amba’s rent to the surly government official who served as landlord, and then went back to the room. Surely there was something here, she thought, that would shed light on where Amba had gone. But there was nothing, no trace of Amba, and apparently, she had vanished without taking anything with her.

Mira tried not to think of the bridge on the next street, overlooking the churning river.

She turned over Amba’s futon, and found a deck of cards. Puzzled, Mira took the cards and turned them over. They were old, and vintage looking, and she felt a sudden pull towards them. 

And then…an extra card tumbled out of the box. A grinning Joker, just one, foiled and glittering. She had never played cards before, and a little laughing voice in her mind now mocked her, goading her to try.

Thrive if you play Twenty-Eight with thirty-two after sundown, came an echoing voice full of laughter. Joker trumps Jack. Oh yes!

The carried with it a musical cadence that mesmerized.

Mira held the cards to her chest, feeling mirth and glee flood her system that was not her own, and walked out of the room.

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