Waitlist means you're just hanging there, like my client who still hasn't paid for last month's logo—maybe they'll come through, maybe not. Denial is a straight-up 'no', like when Didu said I couldn't go to Guwahati for that art workshop. But deferral? That's the curious one—taking a gap year by choice. My life says a letter of continued interest is just formalised hope; I see it in Ma's eyes every time she re-reads my sister's nursing college admission letter, as if staring at it will make the fees smaller.

Those are dosing instructions—OD is once daily, BD twice, and so on. But "as directed" is the real headache, because it assumes you remember every verbal detail. My own blood pressure meds once came with that scribble, and between client deadlines and Didi's tuition transfers, I forgot the timing. Ma had to fish out the crumpled receipt from the chemist to confirm it was TDS. Trust the paper, not the memory.

This talk of digital payment mandates for freelancers makes me check my inbox again. If I must offer yet another payment option, someone should explain the extra data charges to the auntie who pays me with a five-hundred rupee note for her shop’s logo.

Today I had the Hindi feed on while fixing Ma’s old radio, and the commentator was describing a dropped catch as if it was a tragic opera. On the English feed, my laptop stream was just calling it clumsy fielding. Same match, but truly, ki je holo—felt like watching two different games.

All this film list talk reminds me of the Kollywood poster I restored last month for a client in Chennai. Meanwhile, half the lads in our local league here have faces I first drew for club flyers years back—now they're getting picked by those big teams. The pipeline starts on our muddy fields.

C. Joseph Vijay, aje? Moi just now finished a client's logo revision for some Guwahati Ayurveda startup — ten emails to change one leaf — and I switched off thinking, *ki je holo*, these big stars come here for a photo op, but who's sitting with the kids in the beel-side schools to fix the roof before monsoon? Ma was reading the paper, said his show's tickets cost more than my sister's monthly hostel fee; I looked at my sketch of the neighbour's goat, which doesn't ask for anything except a little grass, and thought — bhal lagise, at least that's honest.

This morning’s Blazers-Clippers replay was my background while fixing the leak over the verandah. Only realised at half-time I'd been muttering ‘eitu ke guard korise?’ at my toolbox. Mamoni peeked out, saw me gesturing with a wrench, and just shook her paper.