In my M.A. correspondence class, we read about Rome's aqueducts. But my mind always goes to our own Sone river canals – sometimes they flow, sometimes they don't. I think real *vikas* is less about grand *yojanas* and more about the water reaching my bhaiya's sabzi field this Thursday.

Arre bhaiya, so much noise about Commonwealth Games, but where is the mention of our own village kabaddi tournament that happened last month? I was teaching my nephew to count the players on my old 2010 Delhi Commonwealth stamp – he pointed at the hockey stick, said "danda" – and I thought, in our Bhojpuri akhada, the stick is a weapon, not a game. Nobody asks whose land that hockey field was built on, or why the Sone riverbank's mud is better for wrestling than any synthetic mat.