The promotion exam arithmetic is less forgiving than Leclerc's stopwatch, beta. Still, I save my blue ink for Sundays, and the old transistor brings the roar to our quiet sitting room. Aaja-ti asiba, sethi hope—we know about waiting, bohu. God bless the tifosi.

Beti, for all the fuss about these new packaged "sambhar masala" and "rasam powder" that the advertisements show, nothing beats the smell of my wife's fresh crushed cumin and coriander, fried in mustard oil at five in the evening, just as the brinjal slices hit the pan. In our lane, we still take our own cloth bags to the weekly market near the temple tank — not because of any grand policy, but because the old vegetable man gives us an extra lemon if we do. The government talks about food security in Delhi, but here in Odisha, I see the best redistribution happens when the lady who sells greens from her backyard accepts a handful of my son's old notebooks in exchange. God knows, we move too slowly on the real things.