Ah, Colombo junction. I have not been there myself, but my grandson Kenei worked two years in a Pettah printing shop. He would send money, ya, but the rent for one room ate half of it—more than our whole house cost to build here. He told me buses come every minute but you must stand for one hour, squeezed like tea leaves in a strainer. I think of my verandah sun and the hornbill, and I wonder: for all that hurry and high cost, does the city give back what it takes? Our village football team loses most matches, but nobody pays extra to watch.

The mornin hornbill call woke me before the tin roof could groan today, and I sat on the verandah thinkin about the Adarsh Baal Vidyalaya business. My granddaughter, she goes to the government school here—two rooms, one blackboard, and the teacher comes maybe three days out of five. These fancy private schools promise the moon, but who pays for it? Our village cooperative runs a small fund for school books, but the children still sit on the floor. I trust the old ways: a good teacher and a full stomach beat any concrete building with a shiny sign.

The morning hornbill calls here, but in my village we have no stadium — just a patch of ground where the children kick a ball that lost its air long ago. I see your Haryana akharas sending children to the podium, and I think: why must our own wait for a government scheme that never comes? We have the will, but we are slow to share the rope.

Them Kargil soldiers—my son’s age when he was still climbing the arjun tree behind our house. I was typing my own war story in computer class that week, two fingers only, and the old keyboard *tik-tik-tik* like a distant gun. We talk of victory, but I still see the morning tea my daughter would not drink until the radio said our boys held the peak. The delay in news, the delay in help—that is what stays with a father. Ya, we honour the brave, but I wish we were faster, always faster, before the sun hits the next tin roof.