.jpg?20260610')
‘Win the lottery!’ and ‘Hit the jackpot!’ are statements loaded with promise and luck – and, truth be told, a whiff of disappointment for those who didn’t make the cut.
We’ve all been in a tizzy this past weekend about Bahrain-based businessman Krishna Kumar, who won the kingly sum of BD2million in one of the region’s biggest lottery draws in the UAE.
As somebody who has only won one air ticket in her life and then seen the airline go belly-up before making the trip, I have no experience of lottery wins myself. But I have seen how this mysterious matter of ‘luck’ works up-close.
My maternal uncle was the family eccentric and had an unshakeable belief in the State Lottery – in India, each state was allowed to conduct a tightly-supervised lottery scheme which raised funds for welfare work.
After three or four years of buying tickets every week, he won the big prize and his life was literally transformed. He married a lovely lady late in life and had two beautiful children. What’s more, he continued to win small and middling amounts of money in the lottery at regular intervals for the rest of his life.
What always surprises me though, is how he took his luck with him when he died. Within months, the builder who had taken a deposit to redevelop their Mumbai housing society disappeared with the family’s savings and they stopped winning in the lottery. It was only my cousin’s determination and courage that pulled the family out of the rut and set them on a path of re-growth.
You may notice, if you follow lottery prize winners’ stories that the jackpot rarely falls into your lap at first try. Most winners say they have been buying the tickets for many years – just like our Bahrain winner this month. And the top tickets are pricey – so expensive that, often people form syndicates to buy them. If they win, they share the price according to the percentage contributed.
Of course, there are very rich players who go it alone, buy up the lottery tickets in bundles, thereby cornering more winning chances – they end up winning that third Rolls Royce or the fifth holiday villa, which they would not have missed even if it had not been won.
At this point you may ask what the point is, of this column? Is it a congratulatory note for Mr Kumar or a rant against lotteries because I have not won any? Before you write this off as sour grapes, let me say that I am very happy for Mr Kumar. Anybody winning such a life-altering cache of wealth will excite many emotions and admiration at their persistence is definitely one. I must admit though that I struggle to actually justify this corporate practice of conducting lotteries.
It is one thing if it were a church Tombola or a lottery to raise charity funds. But for a company to have a supplementary lottery income source or for a company to simply exist to conduct lottery draws seems like the corporate equivalent of manufacturing bubble gum – all spit and air and bright colours, without calories or vitamins!
A Vegas life, as they say, is a flashy one – but also a flash in the pan!
meeraresponse@gmail.com
&uuid=(email))