ABSTRACT
In Poona Company, the diasporan Indian writer Farrukh Dhondy begins his autobiographical sketches with an account of a ‘numbers’ game’, called ‘cotton figures’, specific to Bombay and its environs. In ‘satto-pancho (seven-O-five)’, as the betting game was known locally, the idea for the punters was to ‘guess the numbers after the decimal point in the cost of a bale of cotton on the New York cotton share market’ at opening and closing times before they were disclosed in the local evening newspapers. Dhondy comments that on becoming introduced to this bet as a youngster in Poona he became ‘aware that it was somehow one of the indications of a shrinking world. It was also evidence that America was a serious place, with share bazaars and prices and not simply a marvellous place where cowboys shot Indians and got slaughtered for their pains.’1
