QQ2: The City Champion Who Still Had a Night Shift

1. QQ2 story: Friday, 7:12 in the morning

Neha returned from the night shift to find her bedding rolled against the balcony door. Her husband's visiting cousin occupied the room where she usually slept during the day. On the dining table, beneath breakfast plates, lay the city carrom championship schedule she had printed the previous night.

Amit looked up from it. He was the cousin, a successful club player, and one of the favourites for the same event.

“You won't last two rounds,” he said. “You'll be telling everyone you had a shift.”

Neha was thirty-five. As an emergency-services dispatcher she had learned to listen carefully while tired, but she could not remember the last time this household had listened when she said she needed sleep.

Her husband Karan asked whether she could help serve breakfast first. His mother said the visitors had travelled a long way.

Neha stood with her work bag still on her shoulder. Eight weeks of training, two carefully arranged free days and the tournament receipt were reduced to paper beneath a wet glass.

She lifted the glass, dried the schedule and folded it into her bag.

“I am sleeping at my sister's,” she said.

Amit laughed. “For a game?”

Neha picked up the rolled bedding. Nobody offered to carry it down the stairs. At the gate she called her sister, asked whether the spare room was available and waited for the answer before booking the ride.

2. Eight weeks before: the missing hour

The preparation had begun with a cancelled practice session. Karan had promised to finish the shopping, then called late to say Neha would need to do it. She reached the club after the last player had packed away the board.

She sat in the empty room and wrote the missed hour in her diary. The next week she reserved three specific training periods and arranged household work around them in advance. When a request arrived during one of those periods, she offered another time instead of surrendering the session automatically.

Her stroke was accurate in short bursts but unreliable after several boards. She practised in manageable blocks, resting between them, then gradually played complete matches on days when she was properly rested. The aim was a repeatable decision and release, not a heroic number of exhausted attempts.

An adult club partner named Meena helped her separate two faults. Sometimes Neha aimed at the wrong contact point. Sometimes she chose the right point and changed her force abruptly as she struck.

They recorded ten attempts at the same direct cut, then changed the target's position. Neha could not count success on one familiar setup as mastery of every angle.

At home Amit's name appeared in the family conversation whenever sport was mentioned. Neha kept her diary open at the times she had actually used.

3. Three weeks before: four different boards

Neha trained at four halls before the championship. One surface ran quickly; another slowed the striker more noticeably. She observed each board during the permitted warm-up and adjusted without assuming the match surface would behave like the familiar club board.

Meena set a simple exercise: pocket an accessible coin, then judge the new position of the striker and the remaining pieces before preparing the next shot. Neha had been replaying a memorised sequence even when the first stroke produced a different result.

They varied coin order. On one layout the awkward coin needed to go first. On another, an easy coin blocked the only clean contact with the difficult one. Removing the easy coin first opened the route. Calling every position “hard first, easy last” was as unhelpful as doing the reverse automatically.

She practised both and explained the difference aloud afterward.

At a faster hall, her usual force sent the striker into traffic she had intended to leave untouched. She reduced it on the next attempt and found the contact again. A successful pocket mattered less if it destroyed the next available route.

Two weeks before the event she played a complete practice match after a full night's sleep. She won, then wrote down the three turns that still deserved repair. The diary now held a plan she could carry between venues, not a collection of favourite shots.

4. Saturday, 9:20: the first board

Neha slept at her sister's through Friday morning and rested again that night. On Saturday she reached the championship hall before registration closed. Amit arrived with two relatives and asked where she had found time for a holiday.

She showed the official her entry receipt.

The knockout matches were best of three games, with each game played to twenty-five points or eight boards. The opening rounds were scheduled for Saturday; semifinal and final were on Sunday. Neha's next work shift began at ten on Sunday night, leaving time after the published programme.

Her first opponent played a quick attacking game. On the opening board Neha misjudged the surface and sent an intended gentle cut too far. She lost that board, then adjusted her force instead of rebuilding her entire technique in panic.

She won the first game narrowly. In the second, the opponent repeatedly chased a difficult rebound. Neha took the direct routes available to her and kept the queen's cover within her plan rather than treating it as an afterthought.

The match ended two games to none.

As she signed the result, Amit passed on his way to another table. “First rounds are easy,” he said.

Neha handed the scorer the pen. She had an interval to eat and a quarterfinal to prepare. She used both.

5. Saturday, 15:40: the quarterfinal takes time

The quarterfinal lasted longer. Her opponent, Rupa, changed pace effectively, following a cautious board with an aggressive opening that unsettled Neha's expectations.

Neha won the first game and lost the second. In the deciding game she began protecting a narrow lead too passively, leaving Rupa free to improve positions without facing pressure. Meena was watching from the spectators' area, but the adjustment had to come from Neha's own reading of the board.

She chose an accessible attacking cut instead of another harmless placement. The coin fell, and the resulting striker position allowed a second direct pocket. When the next route was blocked, she accepted the end of her useful sequence rather than forcing a third shot through traffic.

The deciding game turned on several such choices. Neha kept the lead and finished before the eighth-board limit.

At the score table Rupa congratulated her on changing the pace back. Neha asked about the opening that had caused trouble in the second game. They discussed it briefly at an unused board, then stopped when the next pair needed the space.

Her phone contained eleven family messages. Most concerned dinner arrangements. One said Amit had also reached the semifinal.

Neha replied with the time she would be resting. Then she sent her sister a question about breakfast and put the phone inside the closed compartment of her bag.

6. Saturday, 20:30: a room with a closed door

Karan visited her sister's flat carrying fresh clothes. He said his mother felt embarrassed that Neha had gone elsewhere while relatives were staying.

Neha unfolded the shirt he had brought and placed it over a chair.

“I came home from work and my bed was on the balcony.”

“It was only for two days.”

“Those were the two days I had arranged.”

He sat without answering.

She showed him the Sunday schedule. The semifinal was in the morning, the final after lunch. She had already arranged food and transport. What she needed from him was to stop volunteering her time to other people.

Karan looked at the quarterfinal result on her phone. For the first time he asked about the match itself. Neha described the moment she had stopped defending her lead without posing any problem for Rupa.

“Can I come tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes. Watch the games.”

After he left, she spent fifteen minutes sketching the troublesome opening, then closed the notebook. She checked the alarm and the bus route. Her sister knocked once to ask whether she needed anything else.

“Quiet,” Neha said.

“You have it.”

The door closed. Nobody called her out to refill a glass. On the bedside table the playing case and the dispatcher identity card lay beside each other, ready for different parts of the following day.

7. Sunday, 10:05: a lead worth keeping

The semifinal opponent, Farhan, had a strong opening break and excellent straight pockets. Neha's advantage came from handling the less comfortable layouts between those clean opportunities.

In the first game she opened a lead by clearing difficult own coins before they became the only remaining problem. When Farhan recovered points, she did not respond by attempting a stroke outside her prepared range. She used the next board to rebuild pressure.

She won the game. In the second she identified an easy coin that obstructed access to a tighter one and removed it first. The following cut became simpler, and the resulting clearance preserved the lead she had built.

Two games to none again. She was in the final.

Karan stood as the result was announced. Amit watched from the next table, where he had completed his own semifinal. He had run out of rounds he could call easy.

During the lunch interval Neha saw him demonstrating an attacking route to a supporter. She did not stand nearby to hear. She checked her own force adjustments and ate the food she had brought.

The final would begin at two. Her next shift remained eight hours away. She had time to play the match properly, travel, eat and prepare for work. She folded the schedule and returned to the hall with her hands warm and steady.

8. Sunday, 14:00: the favourite falls behind

Amit began the final as if he could make the first two boards settle the family conversation. His opening was strong, but he forced a difficult follow-up and left Neha an orderly set of routes.

She took them. Her early lead grew when she pocketed and covered the queen on a board she then won. Amit responded with a spectacular rebound that brought applause but only a small reduction in the gap. Neha kept scoring through accurate clearances.

The first game ended twenty-five to eleven.

Amit asked the scorer to repeat the total. The scorer did.

In the second game he became more patient. He prevented several easy openings and kept the score closer. Neha had to accept awkward turns without letting the first game's margin persuade her that every attack would work.

After six boards she led twenty-three to eighteen. On the seventh, Amit pocketed the queen and covered it correctly. He then missed a thin cut. When Neha's turn arrived, she had two whites left; Amit had two blacks.

The queen belonged to his completed cover. Neha needed only the two points from his remaining coins if she could finish the board.

One white looked almost trivial. The other was awkward, partly because the easy one stood across the cleanest contact line. She saw the order she had practised on the second unfamiliar board.

9. Sunday, 16:47: two ordinary strokes

Neha played the easy white first. She used enough force to pocket it while keeping the striker away from the other coin. The line she needed opened without disturbing Amit's blacks.

He stood behind his chair and looked at the remaining white. A few minutes earlier he had still been calling for water between turns. Now the untouched cup sat near his bag.

Neha set the striker for the second stroke. The contact was narrower than the first, but it was available. She checked the position rather than continuing on the rhythm of the previous success.

The white fell. The striker stayed on the board.

Two black coins remained, giving her the two points she needed. Twenty-five to eighteen in the second game. Two games to none in the final.

The scorer announced Neha as city champion.

Amit remained beside the board until the official asked for the result confirmation. He signed beneath the two game scores, twenty-five to eleven and twenty-five to eighteen. The relatives who had come to support him stood within sight of every number.

Karan approached only after the officials finished. He did not try to explain the victory for her. He asked whether he should carry the playing case.

Neha handed it over, then accepted the cup with both hands. Amit's chair was still turned towards the board when the presentation began.

10. Sunday, 21:35: the next name on the roster

The photograph in the family group showed Neha holding the cup beneath the city championship banner. Karan posted the complete result beside it. Amit added no joke about the opening rounds.

At home Neha found her bedding back in the room. She left the cup on the table and put her next three practice periods on the household calendar. Karan looked at them, then wrote the shopping and meal arrangements around those times.

His mother began to say something about guests. Neha pointed to the dates already agreed before the weekend. The conversation ended with the calendar still on the wall.

At twenty-one thirty-five, Neha reached work. Her colleague looked at the photograph, then at the ordinary bag she carried.

“Where is the cup?”

“On my table.”

“Bring it on your day off. We want a photograph too.”

She changed into her work routine and checked the night's roster. Before putting her phone away, she opened one last message from Amit. He wanted to practise the seventh-board layout.

Neha sent the club's Tuesday time. He replied that he might be late.

“The session starts at seven,” she wrote.

Then she closed the conversation. At home the cup stood beside her open diary. The two strokes from the final were drawn on a page that already had room reserved for the next difficult position.