What is a Thulla in the Bhabhi card game?

A Thulla is an off-suit card played by someone who cannot follow the suit that was led. It ends the trick immediately — nobody after them gets to play. Whoever played the highest card of the original suit must pick up the entire pile and add it to their hand.

Is Bhabhi the same as Thulla, Getaway and Donkey?

Yes. Bhabhi, Thulla, Getaway, Laad, Donkey, Bhabho, Kazhutha, Kalutai, Tochoo and Cangkul are regional names for the same game. The core rule is identical everywhere: follow the suit if you can, and if you can't, your off-suit card ends the trick.

How many players do you need for Bhabhi?

Bhabhi needs at least three players and works well up to six with a single 52-card deck, but four is the classic table and by far the most common. The Thulaa app plays it as a pure four-player game: every table, whether Quick Play or a private room, seats exactly four.

Can you play Bhabhi online with friends?

Yes. Thulaa is a free app for iPhone and Android that runs live four-player Bhabhi games. Create a private room, share the code, and your friends join straight into your table. There is also Quick Play, which matches you with live opponents in about a minute.

Also known as

Donkey card game: which one do you mean?

Short answer

Two different card games are called Donkey. The first is the South Asian shedding game — also called Bhabhi, Thulla or Kazhutha — where you follow suit, dump an off-suit card when you can’t, and the last player holding cards is the donkey. The second is a children’s matching game where you pass cards until someone collects four of a kind and touches their nose; the last to notice is the donkey.

Telling them apart in one question

Do you pass cards, or play them to a trick? If cards get passed face down around the table until someone collects four of a kind, you want the matching game. If everyone plays one card to the middle and has to follow the suit led, you want the Bhabhi game — which is the one this site is about.

	Donkey (shedding)	Donkey (matching)
Also called	Bhabhi, Thulla, Getaway, Laad	Pig, Spoons (variant)
Type	Trick-based shedding	Collecting / matching
Goal	Empty your hand	Collect four of a kind
Deck	Full 52 cards	Four cards per player
The donkey is	Last player holding cards	Last player to touch their nose

Donkey, the shedding game

This is the game played across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal under a dozen names. Deal the full deck out. The Ace of Spades leads. Everyone must follow the suit that was led, and the highest card of that suit wins the trick and leads the next one.

The twist: if you have none of the led suit, you can play any card. That ends the trick immediately and the player winning it has to pick up every card played. Empty your hand and you escape; the last player still holding cards is the donkey.

A regional variant played around Kasaragod in Kerala adds a trump suit, which changes the game substantially — off-suit trumps can win tricks rather than just ending them.

Full rules, with a worked example →

Donkey, the matching game

The children’s game, for roughly 3–13 players (4–7 is best). Take as many sets of four matching cards as there are players and deal four to each person.

Everyone picks one card they don’t want.
On a count, everyone passes that card face down to the player on their left, all at once.
Repeat until somebody holds four of a kind.
That player silently puts their cards down and touches their nose. Everyone else must notice and copy. The last to do it loses.

It is a game of peripheral vision, and it is not related to Bhabhi at all beyond sharing an insult for the loser.

Kazhutha, Kalutai and the rest

“Donkey” is simply the English translation of what the loser gets called in several Indian languages — kazhutha in Malayalam, kalutai in Tamil. In Punjabi-speaking families the equivalent insult is bhabhi, though many tables have moved to “donkey” precisely because it’s the harmless one.