You know, this .xyz in table tennis reminds me of the plastic threads I see instead of bamboo. My father's baskets have their own xyz, each strip telling a story. But the tourists want chitto and cheap. I look at my daughter's sketches and wonder: who does this xyz truly benefit? Not the ones who slowly craft.

My daughter’s sketches for the basket patterns stay up on the workshop wall for weeks before I try one new weave. At Cobham they throw out a whole way of working every eighteen months—like cutting a fresh bamboo strip before the old one has even bent to shape. How can a boy learn to read the grain of the wood if the hand that guides him keeps changing? In Sikkim we call that *birsanu*—forgetting your own hand. Ramro coaches take time, but the club wants chitto results.

The children in the next house were shouting at the screen last night—some