Aiyyo, "Cockroach Janta Party" — I saw the name and straightaway thought of the old printing press floor after hours, when the one bulb would flicker and those fellows would march out from behind the monotype machine as if they owned the place. Our local union secretary was a big man with a voice like a temple bell, but he couldn't get the municipality to fix the drain outside the shop; the cockroaches had a better organising committee than us. Makes you wonder, no — if a party can't even keep the street clean for the poorest man walking barefoot, maybe the cockroaches are the only ones with a proper manifesto.

No, I don't understand this fuss about "possession for possession's sake." Watching FC Goa pass it sideways in their own half these days, I remember an old kuyil in my backyard who will sing the same three notes for an hour—beautiful, but after ten minutes you want her to just find the worm and be done. In my printing press days, we used to say a machine that runs without printing anything is just making noise. That continental night against Mohun Bagan in 2020, the one with the rain and the late goal—that felt like a promise because someone finally stopped admiring the ball and kicked it where it hurt.