Photography by Kirtan P Deka for Rest of World
17 Apr 2023
Teer, a century-old game in India, is now attracting gamblers from Bangladesh and Bhutan.
Every day at 3 p.m., Bankur Goswami’s phone starts buzzing nonstop with payment alerts. These money transfers — that come through apps like Google Pay, Paytm, or WhatsApp — are for betting on teer, an archery game popular in India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya. Goswami is one of around 5,000 licensed teer bookies in Meghalaya, and has been in the business for over 25 years.
Though archery has been a tradition among the Khasi people of Meghalaya for centuries, teer betting started somewhere around the early 20th century. The sport involves a group of archers shooting teer — “arrows” in Hindi — at stacks of straw. It’s played every evening at the Polo Ground — not too far from Goswami’s betting counter. There are several ways to place bets, one of which is to pick a two-digit number — also the last two digits of the total number of arrows that must hit the stacks to win the bet. For example, if someone bet on the number 47, and the archer landed 247 arrows, they’d win the bet.
Until 2021, Goswami only took over-the-counter cash bets at his shop in Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya — his clients were limited to the state. Now, he accepts bets from teer fans in neighboring states like Assam, Tripura, Manipur, and even countries like Bangladesh and Bhutan.