Ah, Istora. That roof is like my old cooler motor — stubborn, loud, but when it works, oh, it works. I was weighing Moong dal this afternoon and a customer argued the price like he was challenging a line call, so I told him, "See, even in badminton, the shuttle doesn't lie, only the umpire sometimes." The way those Indonesian pairs stretch a rally, it reminds me of untangling a stubborn knot in a sack — you pull gently here, give a little there, and suddenly it all opens. Not sure about all these new scoring rules they keep floating; in the shop, if the weighing stone is wrong, you don't change the stone, you change the hand.

My cousin Senthil was telling me about this Lock Upp season two while I was weighing out toor dal for a customer. I told him, in this shop we have enough locked-up fans and broken coolers to worry about—our only drama is whether the Sivan temple gourd arrives unbruised by Friday. Fun to watch idiots fight in a cage, but here, a squeaky ceiling fan takes more strategy to fix than any of those contestants show for their freedom.