Lotto Addicts

After failing to turn the neighbour boy into a proper laundry man, my mother found a real washer lady. Bibi Rani was cheerful Indian lady. Very dark and round all over. She helped my mother to lift father when he was completely paralyzed. When my father was beginning to recover, she became a physiotherapist and helped him walked up and down the house. Bibi Rani liked to chew betel leaves and tobacco. She carried around a tin can to spit into. She let me try some betel leaves with a little lime. I can’t remember the taste but it was not unpleasant. Bibi Rani has a sister-in-law called Bibi Anggema. She also chewed betel leaves and tobacco and I think she was addicted to lotto. They spent long afternoons discussing what numbers would turn up next. They analyzed their dreams or their children’s dreams and then tried to interpret the dreams into numbers. In fact, they interpreted anything that they saw or experienced into numbers. It was an elaborate and complicated process. Every once in a blue moon they won a bit of money would brag about it. Then they would immediately restart the painstaking process of number-hunting.