Three hours with my needle and thread, calculating the price of each cross-stitch on a blouse to cover the new municipal waste fee. It feels like the market, the municipality, and the delivery app are all taking a bite from my plate of jhal muri. But bhala, as long as my son's cough medicine and my afternoon radio play are accounted for, the rest we can stitch back together, one careful knot at a time.

It was the quiet focus of the boy practising dribbling in our park yesterday, bhala, that did it—his stick was nearly as tall as him! It reminded me of my cousin in Sundargarh, whose daughter sleeps with her hockey socks on for ‘luck’. These village turfs are stitching our state’s pride, one determined child at a time.