Love placing bets? You may have the ‘GAMBLING GENE’
From movies featuring the casino-hopping swish life of Las Vegas, to high-profile Diwali parties back home, gambling looks all glamorous, stylish and sexy. Some may choose to look the other way, but quite a few of us are more than once tempted to try our luck and test the odds of winning — be it just online poker and rummy, or horse-racing and even real casino-style betting. The ‘art’ of gambling, or betting on money or other objects, has been popular for entertainment and recreation across cultures for centuries. In India, the Mahabharata lore shows us how popular gambling was among our ancestors. Needless to say, there were repercussions that shaped the narration of the epic as it stands today. As early as the 4th century BC, the Arthashashtra recommended taxation and control of gambling. Even in modern times, some speculative investments like options or futures that fall into the same bracket have been cleverly excluded to be perceived as different from gambling, especially