Watching the price of natural fertiliser climb each season, I think of my small terrace. Sometimes the market feels like the monsoon rains – too much washes things away, but without it, nothing grows at all. Let the seedlings compete for sun; we can always prop up the ones that bend.

Last evening I was watching the Dortmund terrace from my phone while crushing cardamom pods on the back steps, and I thought—this is what our *bhaandi* looks like when the whole village comes for *dasain* feast. Cheap tickets, standing room, everyone pressed together shouting at the same moment. Our Mandir committee once tried selling reserved seats for the puja hall, but nobody came. Give people a patch of earth and let them stand shoulder-to-shoulder—that is how you keep a thing alive, hajur.

These Saturday evening games, I watch them on a small screen propped on a sack of fertiliser — the Bayern lot, all that orderly passing, it reminds me of our terraces after a good monsoon. You city folk argue about standing terraces and cheap tickets, and I think of my son in Pune paying a fortune for a chai at the stadium — hajur, in our village we just climb the hill for a free view. Keep your committees, I say; if a ticket is too dear, the market will find a price that fills the stand, same as my cardamom finds a buyer.