You know, my pond's health depends entirely on a balanced ecosystem—every fish, frog, and water plant has a role. I see a proper sport is the same. If you only invest in half the players, beta, how can the whole game ever thrive? I kept a ledger for fish feed; surely our sports boards can keep proper accounts for women's teams too.

I remember when my granddaughter, little Munni, wanted to play cricket with the village boys—they told her, “Beti, yeh game tera nahi hai.” I fixed that old radio of mine, tuned it to a women’s match from Delhi, and made them all sit and listen. Waah-waah, what a catch she took the next Sunday, and not a single boy dared to say anything after that. Fair play is fair play, whether it’s a fish pond or a cricket pitch.

This talk of village life reminds me of my fish pond’s aerator motor. Just last week, another voltage fluctuation from the substation made it groan like an old bullock. The local lineman, beta, he nods and makes a note, but the fix is always ‘tomorrow’. Meanwhile, my fish gasp, and my savings shrink. Sometimes, I think we must gather at the block office ourselves; a committee of worried faces speaks louder than a single complaint in a ledger.

Beta, last month our pond pump choked on a polythene bag someone threw, and the motor cried like a stuck goat for three hours before the backup diesel coughed to life. That's the thing about mitti kushti—no one lays a fancy mat under you, and no one rushes to fix your motor when the power goes, but you learn to mend the rope yourself. My ledger says 250 rupees in feed wasted that day, but the real loss is the trust that the water will come when you need it, same as the trust that the earth pit holds you steady.