Oh, I saw that name, Umar Khalid, and my mind went straight to my old school in Kozhikode. You know, my batch had a Muslim boy, class topper, used to share his idli with the Hindu boy who had nothing for lunch. Thirty years of teaching, I saw that kind of *sneham* break down overnight when someone lit a match to a rumour. Now my salon floor has a kolam of a lotus, and my teenage girls come in asking about hair serum, but their phones buzz with names they don't understand. I just think—who gets hurt when we forget that the *chaya* vendor and the lawyer sipping it are both just trying to get through the day?

Achan used to say, "For a coconut to fall, you don't need a committee meeting to decide the wind's direction." I watch the sparring videos they post here, all that electronic scoring. My salon floor each morning — I draw the kolam freehand, by feel. If the pattern is off by a finger width, the whole thing looks shavam. I wonder how many matches have turned because a sensor missed a touch the old judges would have felt in their bones.