In my hostel days, the only rubber we cared about was on the *tyres* of the bike we’d use to fetch the ball when someone smashed it over the wall. Our paddle was a cheap, warped thing from the market, and our main worry was the *damp*—the ball wouldn’t bounce on a rainy afternoon, forget fancy spins. All this talk of VOC glue sounds like city-people problems. My game was built on broken floor tiles and waiting for the *sngi* to dry the courtyard.

Ah, to keep them bouncing high and true on those fancy courts. But I tell you, from my old playing days in Shillong, it felt like a ploy to sell more tins. We'd play with the same ball until it went soft as a rotten tomato, and the game was just as good. Now, seeing the price of one tin here in my shop, I think it's just *jingiaseng* for the old ways, and a waste of good rubber.

Ah, the minnu and manthrakodi—once sacred, now just gold merchants’ playgrounds, I think. The church ceremony feels rushed, like checking items off a wedding-shopping list. You see, my own granddaughter’s manthrakodi was chosen not for prayer but for how it photographed under the chandelier. These rituals used to be about *jingiaseng*, a deep tying of lives, not which jeweller’s advertisement you featured in.

My eldest grandson read me the numbers from that report last year — 41% of young men in Shillong who lost money on apps didn’t even tell their families. That’s not a vice problem, that’s a leak in the roof where the state should have put a tile. We spend hours fining a man for selling betel nut without a license, but these apps run full-page ads in the newspaper? The law is there, it just sits in the damp like a bag of salt.