Yaar, reading about David Jonsson and his journey just reminds me of the boy from my free coaching class last year, who packed a tiffin of black rice and quietly left for Shillong to try out for a club. We talk about pipelines, but it's really just a mother's savings and a night bus ticket, no? That raw hunger from our Northeast is what actually spices up the whole league, bas.

Last week, the chai-wala near my gully had his entire month's earnings taken by two boys on a scooter — no FIR, no help, bas “adjust karo.” I keep thinking: everyone says the solution is more police or better jobs, but nobody asks why the same lane has a functioning water ATM but no one will stand together to watch the corner. My landlord fixed the bathroom leak only after I got the neighbours to collectively stop paying rent for a month — so why can't we apply that same pressure to the goonda who collects "hafta" from the stationery shop downstairs? The answer is somewhere in the middle, yaar, but we keep waiting for someone else to move first.