Under the rules, households must segregate waste into wet, dry, and hazardous categories. Bulk generators, like my hotel, must compost wet waste and hand over dry waste to authorised vendors. Municipalities are to collect, transport, and process it all. But in my town, the municipality truck mixes everything together again—so my careful segregation feels pointless, *hyaan*. Only the fear of a fine makes me keep doing it.

Reimer-Tiemann reaction uses chloroform and alkali on phenol to introduce an aldehyde group, while Kolbe’s reaction uses sodium hydroxide and carbon dioxide to give salicylic acid. So Reimer-Tiemann gives salicylaldehyde. I should know this clearly, but *hyaan*, last night my son’s fever had me up, and today these names are swimming in my head like alphabet soup.

In our village, we call them *janowar-gulo* — tiny creatures doing big work. For curd it is *lactobacillus*, and for biogas in my plant, it is *methanogens* that turn waste into fuel. Sewage is also treated by similar bacteria breaking down waste. But I must say, for us, curd does not start with a named microbe from a book. It starts with yesterday's curd, a spoon of *dahi* as *starter* from my neighbour. That is the real 'microorganism' we use here, passed between homes.

Percentile rank shows your position compared to other students, not your percentage—it tells if you did better or worse than them. I know this from my Junior Clerk exam guidebook. But for us, percentage feels more true, because when I got 60% in my Madhyamik, that number meant something solid to my family, a real achievement. The percentile feels like a government calculation, while the percentage is what we celebrate with a 'khub bhalo' at home.

When NEET unified the entrance, it brought fairness in theory, but older AIIMS like Delhi had decades to build their reputation and facilities—we newer campuses are still catching up. From my life in a newer AIIMS, the biggest change is we sometimes feel like we are proving ourselves against the shadow of the old institutes. My batchmate from a village got in through NEET, which is khub bhalo, but our library has far fewer journals than the main campus, and we hear this in every orientation. So, the difference is not just in age of buildings, but in resources, and that shapes our daily struggle to be seen as equal.

Mi hija mayor me envió anoche un mensaje de voz desde Calcuta. Dijo: "Maa, no te rindas con el examen de computación. Yo te enseño por videollamada los fines de semana". Hyaan, she is khub bhalo. Pero en la tienda de racionamiento, cuando veo a los ancianos analfabetos luchar con el lector de huellas digitales para su trigo, pienso: ¿quién diseñó este sistema? Nadie preguntó a la última persona de la fila si le sirve. Yo aprendo el teclado, pero ellos no tienen a una hija que les mande un audio de aliento. Ese es el verdadero problema — no es la tecnología, es quién se queda fuera.

Yesterday's match report reminded me of my son's old arithmetic book—so many numbers, hyaan, but each with a story. I keep one page open for cricket scores and one for practice sums, the pencil marks mixing like a careful scoreboard. This Bengal innings felt like my evening radio Rabindrasangeet, steady and building something.

Every evening, I time my walk by the railway quarters with the sports bulletin on the radio. It feels like a small discipline, like my arithmetic practice for the junior clerk exam. I keep a list of our athletes' names and their latest timings in my old ration shop notebook—it’s khub bhalo to follow their progress, season by season.

রেফারির সিদ্ধান্ত নিয়ে যতো কথা হয়, আমার কিন্তু মনে পড়ে — একবার আমাদের পাড়ার ক্লাবের ম্যাচে হাফটাইমে বাদাম খেতে গিয়ে দেখি, প্রতিপক্ষের দলের এক বুড়ো মালি বলছে, "ওই রেফারি তো ওই স্কুলের হেডস্যার, তার ডিসিশন কখনো বাড়ির বাচ্চাদের বিপক্ষে যায় না।" সেটা ১৯৮৭ সালের ঘটনা। সেইদিন থেকে বুঝেছি, ময়দানের ফুটবলেও নিয়মের চেয়ে লোকজনের সম্পর্ক বেশি চলে — আর সেই কারণেই মোহামেডানের সঙ্গে ইস্টবেঙ্গলের রেফারি বিতর্ক শুধু খেলার না, পাড়ার লোকের হিসেবেরও বিষয়।

Reading about Manipur’s boxers training with such heart reminds me of my son’s old maths olympiad days—same fierce focus, but with so much less to work with. Their discipline is khub bhalo. It makes my own worries about the computer exam feel smaller, I must say.

Watching these Banner counting discussions, I remember my old ration shop ledger—how each column had to balance perfectly, just like their switch-everything defence. My son sleeps upstairs while I note down phrases like “lockdown intensity” from the newspaper, and I think even from our Indian living room, we understand that precise calculation. These Garden nights must sound like our Rabindrasangeet on the radio—full of a shared, building hope.