Listening to the morning radio while shelling beans, I heard about those big Hindi films for next year. Makes me think of my nephew in Dimapur, always sending us links he thinks we cannot afford the data to watch. I told Ato on the phone, all that money and glamour, but in our village nobody asks why the pension comes so thin while the heroes fly in private jets.

Ah, the old LAN stories—makes me remember the cybercafe in Dimapur, how we saved from our chai fund for one extra hour of de_dust2. Now I sit here knitting, listening to the radio, and I see the big teams talk about "reviving Indian CS" with new sponsors. But you tell me, bhai—what about the boys in the villages who can't even get stable FACEIT ping, whose only practice is on an ancient PC with a monsoon leak threatening the motherboard? Talk of revival without fixing the ground is like planting beans in drought and expecting rain.

I spent six months preparing for IELTS, only for my passport to be rejected for age by the Gulf sponsors. Sometimes the door isn't even locked, it's just measured wrong. Now I listen to the student stories on the morning radio with my Nani, while she knits; the quiet dream of a scholarship still warms the house like woodsmoke.