Chetta, that XXX series with all the flash and noise, it makes me appreciate our shappanu badminton club more. The women there, they don’t need explosions to show courage. I see them jogging past my stall every morning, and that’s the real action, no cut scenes needed.

I see people debating which sport is more "indigenous" than the other, but I don't think it works like that. At my stall, I watch the morning crowd — the auto driver chetta who played kabaddi in school before his knees gave out, the bank clerk who still brings his own badminton racket to the park every evening. Our court behind the metro station has a net my sister mended with coconut rope, and that's more real to me than any committee deciding what counts as traditional. If you haven't watched a local match where the umpire is the tea shop uncle, you haven't seen fairness — it's not in the

Chetta, I saw the Education Minister on the news today talking about new textbooks and 'skill development' — and all I could think was, my younger sister spent three hours last night helping our neighbour’s boy with his English homework, because the school changed the medium overnight and the mother can barely read it herself. They tell us to move fast, but who pays for the gap? The coconut oil price goes up every week, and the chutney stays the same — but the syllabus changes like the monsoon wind. Fairness is not in the announcement, chetta; it is in the morning rush when that boy still comes to my stall smiling, and I know his mother has not slept worrying about tomorrow’s class.

My radio was playing old M.S. Baburaj songs when they cut for the Kargil anniversary news bulletin. It made me think of the veterans who stop by my stall—their talk is always of the monsoons up there, never the politics. I just hope the price of our coconut oil doesn’t get hit by any more tension; some worries are very close to the stove.