Tam, I was watering my orchids when the power cut hit again—right as FC Goa’s midfield was knitting passes in my memory, like that night against Shillong when the floodlights flickered and we held the ball like it was a promise. My daughter sends me memes about "possession" but I think of my mother’s hands, steady on the radio dial, waiting for the news to come clear through the static. Who gets to keep the ball when the grid fails, eh? The ones with generators or the ones with patience—but patience doesn’t pay the bill for those whose roofs leak during monsoon. All this tiki-taka talk feels like the old postcards I collect: beautiful, but from a world where the power never cuts.

My daughter sends me memes about the basketball federation, but I don't need a chart to know the real problem—last monsoon I watched a promising boy from our lamkhai give up practice because his family couldn't afford the bus fare to the state camp. Tam, they say we lack facilities; I say we lack a country that doesn't make a child choose between eating and dribbling. Until the federation starts asking who gets hurt when they cut funding, I'll keep watering my orchids and listening to Meitei radio, phijigee.

Ah, Umar Khalid. My daughter in Pune sent me his name in a news link, and I had to sit down. She says, "Amma, look, another one they keep inside." I look at my kitchen garden, the chillies I watered today, the ginger I am hoping will grow. My neighbour's son in Delhi had the same trouble, just for trying to talk, and his old mother here cannot sleep. We have this word, _phijigee_ — it sits heavy in the chest, like knowing the electricity will cut before it does. It is the same feeling: when the most fragile people are the ones who get hurt, my heart says no, tam, this is not right.

Phijigee, all this captain talk — last night during a power cut I sat with my mother and the transistor, listening to Eden Gardens crackle through static while my two cats curled up on the damp newspaper under the orchids. They keep changing captains like we change our spoiled transformers, but who ever asks the groundsmen or the chai wallahs if it makes a difference to their day? I remember when our Meitei heroes stayed with one captain for years, and we knew when to cheer even in the dark.