Mahjong, Our Jong!

A two-century old game is the freshest one in town.

It is empty when we enter: a Chinese parlour with olive green walls and loud decor to match; a hot pink sofa and a cupboard of accessories arranged to angular perfection. This is Mahjong Lounge in Koramangala, opened by Nazlah Salam in January, this year. The Lounge sits beside The Brunch Project that guarantees the ever-present smell of freshly brewing coffee. There’s a sense of intimacy as we enter the space. The road outside is quiet, and Bengaluru’s Wednesday afternoon rains are conducive to the evening we are about to have: the one in which the LURU newsletter team learns how to play mahjong.

Play your tiles right

When a game has existed for centuries, even before the internet or even, ahem, climate change was a real thing, who are we to declare that Mahjong is now a Bengaluru trend? Needless to say, Mahjong is a thing, here and everywhere else, and we’ve only decided to hop on to the bandwagon, and on a good day too. “Madam Mahjong is going to be here,” Nazlah tells us. “You can see what her games are like.”

The air of mystery leads us to imagine a crowned woman with a certain pizazz. While the lack of a crown was only somewhat disappointing, it’s short-lived; she walked into the parlour and brought it alive. Madam Mahjong, the brand now synonymous with Deepa Dodla, is India’s Mahjong celebrity from Hyderabad. She’s been in Bangalore for about 10 days, and informed Nazlah only the previous day that “she just wanted to play a good game,” in the middle of conducting several workshops and events for the city’s Mahjong crowd.

The table was booked, the tiles readied. Each Mahjong game requires a square table, special Mahjong mats (that allow for the tiles to be moved with buttery smoothness), and four players. “There are young mothers here all the time, this is the only time they get to themselves.” Nazlah says, “There’s a preschool nearby so they drop their kids off and play their games till 12.” Shravya P, who runs UBIKA Preschool just around the corner, is here for her second game of the day. “I just finished a game at 12,” Shravya says, but was unable to resist the Madam Mahjong game. When a celebrity is in town, why try?

Twittering along

“I've lived in Koramangla for six years now. Before that, I was living in a building with many Mahjong players. And they started playing so much. One friend taught all the players during COVID, and that's how they passed the time.” Nazlah laughs, warning us that it’s an addiction, a subculture, a habit that cannot be dropped. Mahjong is an ancient Chinese game, but like language, it migrates and grows its own roots. Indian Mahjong is no different, pioneered especially by a version of the game called Mahjong Gita, named so not because of the Bhagvad, but after Gita Patel, who loved playing it so much that she invented a version of it with Indianisms that now confuse us.

As Nazlah continues to teach us with immense patience, we make mistakes and end up playing Vietnamese Mahjong: everything is important, it becomes clear. Don’t touch another player’s tiles (psst, your energy might leak into theirs), when you pick up a tile, and place it on your rack, it must make the noise so that the other players know you’re done with your turn.

When we accidentally let our phones distract us, Nazlah stops us: bringing us back to the task at hand. She’s shuffling the tiles before we get ready to learn another set of rules, but everyone must move around the tiles together because “everyone’s energy must be transferred to the tiles.” As we get to the task, she says, “We call this twittering,” it’s what the tiles sound like when they’re shuffled well, a cascade of sound.

Tabled for later

On the Wednesday that we meet Nazlah, she’s between events. From a packed Saturday where she hosted a charity event to a day-long Mahjong event soon after, the demand is plenty. When Shravya tells her that she ran into another Mahjong player somewhere else, Nazlah immediately guesses who it was. She’s right. The world is small, complicated, but deeply intentional. “You don’t even need to speak the same language to play the game,” she points out. She teaches us the Chinese words we need to know: kong, pung, and the sought-after Mahjong, which describes a winning hand.

When we finally get a winning hand, it’s with Nazlah’s help. The triumph fades soon after when Nazlah returns to her seat and quietly says, “I Mahjong-ed long ago.” And we’re only halfway through the lesson.

The details: Visit Mahjong Lounge at 439, 8th Main Rd, 4th Block, Koramangala.The lounge is only one of many Mahjong venues peppered across the city; check out Dragon Flower Mahjong and Fia’s Lounge to learn how to play, and watch your days disappear.