The Commonwealth Games, they say it will bring development, but I remember when the government built that big stadium in Shillong—now the drainage there blocks our village stream. Here on the verandah, my sister and I still weave our khtoh baskets from the same bamboo my father used, and the afternoon rain still falls the same. I wonder if any of that money will ever reach the children who need a textbook for Environmental Science, or if it just builds a bigger stage for people who never watch the monsoon arrive.

I watched my younger brother sprint home in the drizzle last evening — barefoot, mud-splattered, grinning because his team scored the only goal of the match. The federation talks about training centres in Shillong, but the ground he played on has no posts, no nets, and the referee was the chai uncle with a broken whistle. If we want to know why we are not better, we should count how many of our best players are still weaving baskets for exam fees — the real data is in their notebooks, not in the budgets.