It's a warm October evening, and Chimman Patidar's tea stall at Bandra's Kala Nagar has a gaggle of taxi drivers huddled on a bench, poring over a phone. Their sporadic laughter is drowned by the traffic on the main road. For those standing around, sipping tea, this is a regular spectacle — one they've been witnessing for the last eight months, and something they pass off as flippant. The group couldn't care less about the derision.

Admittedly, it's their downtime. Every day at 7.30 pm, the men gather for an hour or two at the makeshift thela for a game of Ludo King. When things heat up, it could continue for upto three hours. "It rejuvenates me, and prepares me to go back to the grind," says Bhagwan Patel, a 59-year-old taxi driver from Bihar. His four-year-old Chinese-make smartphone had never seen an app-based game until now. The only purpose the handset served was to help him reach his family back home. "Occasionally, I'd listen to music while waiting for customers at Bandra Terminus," he adds. It was last year during a routine round of chai that Patidar introduced Patel and a group of taxi drivers to the game. "Life wasn't the same after that," laughs Patel. "After years, I was experiencing child-like excitement."