One of my fondest memories from childhood is of playing Monopoly and crushing my friends. I was a ruthless landlord. I’d shoot the dog with the revolver from Clue if he couldn’t pay. Now there is Desi-opoly, UK Desi-opoly to be precise. From the Yorkshire Post Today:
Called Monopoly UK “Desi” – the Asian term for homeland – it will feature Indian icons such as the Taj Mahal and Bollywood, as well as British streets famous for Asian culture, such as London’s Brick Lane and Manchester’s Wilmslow Road.
The traditional counters of top hat, dog, racing car and boot are to be replaced with three-wheeled scooters, tigers, cricket bats and Indian sweets.
Creator Gurdip Ahluwalia, who came up with the idea while working for games manufacturer Hasbro, is still seeking street names and landmarks to replace Mayfair, Park Lane and Old Kent Road.
One of the playing pieces is an Indian sweet? Somehow I can’t picture demanding money from a gulab jamun. Then again I could never understand the purpose of the iron in regular Monopoly. After “Punjabi Boy” (the frequent Brit commenter on SM)plays this we’ll get a full report.
You’ve never been married to a desi man 😉 (I hasten to add, neither have I.)
My mini-rickshaw will totally leave your jalebi piece in the dust.
Wot no Soufall?
I am the King of cheating at Monopoly. I used to create distractions and steal money from the banker when nobody was looking. I also kept those goody cards from Community Chest stuck up my sleave. I also perfected the art of ingratiating myself to everyone so that when I went past ‘Go’ to collect £200 they let me help myself and I could sneakily pull a few extra notes out because they trusted me. The bastard thing though is that I still lost, always. I didnt actually understand the concept of the game. Still dont. I thought it was an excuse to have fun. Others took it seriously.
Once, my cousins had a fight over a game and didnt talk for ages. It brought everything to a head, all the tensions in the family, I think it was a subliminal playing out of a family feud from generations ago about the dividing up of six square feet of land and the division of a herd of goats which took place in the 1920’s. People are still sore. I can only imagine the tension of what took place in taht game when one cousin landed on the others property and had to pay thousands, and all the bad blood rose to boiling point. Monopoly is dangerous for desi’s, wouldnt surprise me if it causes a few murders, especially among Punjabi Jatt’s, who will use any excuse to bash each other and kill their relatives over property and land.
I have nominated a few roads for this edition. Soho Road in Birmingham, Belgrave Road in Leicester, Southall Broadway in Southall. The other suggestions are rubbish. All those roads are in cities full of tramps like Bradford. I also nominated the road I live in, and the hospital I was born in, because I live there, and was born there. These will cost a million pounds each, on the Monopoly board. I also want one of the playing pieces to be a statue of me.
Someone please come in with a reality check before Punjabi Boy becomes an institution 🙂
PS: Brick Lane my arse.
Brit Spice
You have to have Brick Lane on it or else there will be a jihad by Bengali’s saying they are being ignored, which is frightening. You have to have Southall and Soho Road or else Sikhs will blow up a cinema. You have to have Leicester and Wembley or else Hindus Gujaratis will go on a riot or tear down a mosque. You have to have Pakistani localities like Bradford or else there will be some more shoe-bombers and stuff. You have to have Tooting or else some Tamil’s will go crazy with Samurai swords. Its just the way it is. It could cause disaster if people arent recognised properly. Its actually more trouble than its worth. Are you telling me that Sikhs are going to accept it if Southall Broadway is worth less on the Monopoly board than some Pakistani street in Manchester? No way. That would be a big diss and there would be riots and demonstrations, in fact I would be at the front of them, one of the main organisers. Nobody is going to accept being priced less than Bangladeshi Brick Lane, no way, this will be mayhem.
In that case, this fella needs to rethink his strategy. You can’t please everyone. Maybe he should scratch the roads specific to certain cultures and just have one called “Paki Street”
Brit Spice
They need a separate one for each community.
Yes, but at the expense of all out warfare?
Brit Spice
Sometimes, warfare is the only way.
I am going to organise some death threats now against the dude who is putting this thing together.
Haha! That is so wrong….I didn’t get the Tamil sword reference though, what is that about? I was expecting an M.I.A.-esque reference
I’d nominate a “Katti Patang” for one of the pieces, from our kite-fighting festival days…
also, when are they going to do an American Desi version?
vurdlife
There are loads of gang killings amongst Tamils in London for some reason, big notorious problem, and theres always something in the newspaper about some Tamil guy being chopped up with a Samurai sword in a petrol station or something!
hmm, interesting to hear that tamilians take care of business with samurai swords too. the only thing that even comes close to a samurai sword (and the samurai way of life) in india is the Kalarippayatu martial artform of Kerala.
Field trip to Punjabi Boy’s house for board-game night!!
um, what happened to the “Shorts”?
You can see a photo of the board game and nominate UK streets for inclusion here.
They’re all there, in the main column.
Does any one else think that Rich Uncle Pennybags should be replaced by a SardarJi?
Punjabi Boy – you’re singing my song. I was the WORST cheater at Monopoly. My parents decided that as the eldest, I should be the banker. I was Enron++ A hundred for the bank, and a hundred for the banker – if you know what I mean. And the trash talking!!!! The game ended in tears (from my brothers) so often, that Mum and Dad declared a moratorium.
Nice to see a mention of Kalari, but me thinks it was more of an artform and less of a (samurai-esque) way of life.
I second the motion or maybe replace Pennybags with him
Paranoid, that boy’s got some hops! Reminds me of S Robinson, aka Robin, India’s version of Vince Carter
I guess you all know the desi version of Monopoly – TRADE. Even before I got to Bombay I knew Zaveri Bazaar, Charni Road,etc.
Chokes on her croissant.
Methinks the gentleman doth protest too much.
Hey Mutineers, I find myself in Europe (the continent, not the oft-visited UK) and I am shocked at the number of desis everywhere who seem to actually live here. Zurich apparently has a large Sri Lankan community, for instance. I don’t know if you take requests, but I’d love to see more posts on desi-European angles. I’ll keep an eye out for the apparently irate Sikh community here in Paris.
The original pieces each represent major industries. The iron represents the steel industry. Maybe the sweet is food processing? agriculture?