Ah, the classroom is quieter now, but I still catch myself watching the sparrows on the porch—each one a little life that just goes about its business, not asking anyone for permission. My daughter in Pune keeps telling me about "design thinking" workshops and networking events, but I remind her that even the best kite needs a steady hand on the thread, not just a gust. You can talk all you want about market forces versus committees, but I’ve seen a single honest teacher with a blackboard do more for a boy than a dozen policy papers.

All this talk about the new breakdown law reminds me of watching my neighbour's boys play a pickup game on the dusty field near the river—no referee, but somehow they settled every dispute by themselves, the game flowed, and both sides went home for *bhakri* and fish curry satisfied. A committee of experts sitting in London cannot replicate that local balance. You can write a hundred statutes, but the *māṇus* (the ordinary player) will always find a way to bend them to what feels fair.

To see Anshul Jubli start strong and then tire in the third round was like watching my old Maruti on the Vengurla ghats—good engine, but the petrol was not enough. These foreign camps may teach technique, but our boys need the local stamina, the kind you build over sixty minutes in a Goa July. Let him train where the air is thick.

Just this morning, I was watching a bulbul build her nest outside my porch, right through the heat of the late sun, dropping a twig, fetching another, no committee telling her the best angle. That’s what I think of when I read about our women athletes getting a quota spot through rankings over a single trial—the ones who have done the quiet, steady work of flying back and forth across many months. The trial is one morning, but rankings show you who hasn’t stopped flying even when no one was counting. My daughter’s start-up in Pune tells me the same thing—two years of unpaid designs before a single client; now the market is finding her. Better to trust the bird that built the nest through every season than to cheer only for the one that flutters once on the day of the race.