Actually, it appeared, there was to be little choice - you could either join in, or move on. Looking at the stakes being called around us, we noticed an absence of money on the tables. Instead, each hand was accompanied by a swipe of the players' debit cards for instant credit to whoever managed the billing system. Piles of bank cards lay stacked before the players. Spouses borrowed or loaned cards to each other. "I think," I said to my wife, "I need some fresh air." Thankfully, there were people we knew on the terrace, and a moment of some embarrassment passed when our host urged us to join him at his table. "We'll be along," my wife smiled at him, "just as soon as we've recharged our drinks."
What we did, in fact, was to slink out and back home - just in time to catch the kids taking off for late-night parties of their own. "Oh, goodie," said my daughter to me, "can I borrow your debit card?" I must have gone red in the face because she quickly explained that she was having a problem with her debit card, so wanted to withdraw some money on my account "on loan, Dad, you can start breathing again". It was her mother who became breathless, however, when I said there was cash in my wallet she might want to borrow instead. It turned out that the sum I thought generous enough - it's what I'd won the previous evening at a friend's home where, clearly, we'd played extremely low stakes - was far from adequate for her and her friends, who probably lost as much in each round. "I'll just withdraw what I need on my way," she said, niftily purloining a debit card from my wallet.
"If she gets a debit card, I want one too," argued my son. There was no way I was parting with another debit card - the children had ingenious ways of not returning loans taken previously - so, it was his mother's card that he contrived to "borrow". Bereft of our cards, spurned by our acquaintances who gambled professionally, we were feeling wretched and lonely when Sarla called: Did we want to walk across to their home for a round or two of Diwali cards? Which is how we ended up playing our Lilliputian stakes, clapping childishly when we won a hand, or cried over the few hundreds lost in spite of "such good cards". It also felt more real than playing with plastic currency where the shock of losses would register the following day when the fantastic sums they'd gambled were totted up to some horrendous figure. Perhaps to be multiplied again in the evening. The madness - credit cards, debit cards, petty cash and drunken shocks - will thankfully stop after this weekend. After which, I hope, I'll have my debit cards back in my wallet again.