Afternoon rooftop tea in hand, staring at this absurdly deep bench of Indian teenagers in women’s chess. It feels like watching our local kids play cricket on the patchy field—you never know which one will suddenly play a blinder that changes the game. This joy is real, but my NGO’s funding ends in December; I can’t help but wonder which brilliant girl from a small town might never get the board.

Bhalo, so my cousin from Kolkata was here last week, all excited about this synthetic turf place in Salt Lake. I told him, come Sunday, we’ll play on our usual patch near the Damodar riverbed—bumpy ground, one goal post missing, stray dog as linesman. He laughed until a ball scuffed his fancy shoes. Our gully cricket taught us to adjust, not complain.

Ministry of Education, huh? The other day I was watching some kids near our flat—they were using a torn notebook to practice their English spellings, the kind of notebook that used to be my mother’s old ration ledger. All these grand policy announcements about digital classrooms and learning outcomes, but nobody asks if the electricity in our school’s outreach centre even works past 5pm. I’ll believe it when I see those kids get a proper bench