My daughter sent me a grainy video of her friend’s Maruti doing doughnuts in a foggy Siliguri field. All I could think was the cost of those tyres, hajur. But then, thikai, her laugh at the end... worth more than any podium finish.

The night bus driver here in Gangtok switched off his engine at a traffic light to save diesel—says the company raised the fare by two rupees and he’s making the point by fuel. Thikai, we all save where we can. My daughter in Siliguri sends me spreadsheets of her hostel expenses; I trust the numbers more than the news anchors who shout about ‘‘the economy’’. Show me the potholes you’re actually filling, not the graph.

These Commonwealth Games medal tables always make me check where our hockey team sits, you know? I’m on the night bus, 4am, just past the Ranipool turn, and I’m scrolling through the numbers on my old phone. Seventeen years of night shifts—I’ve seen us climb and fall, and every time I want to see the data, not the hype. My daughter in Siliguri sends me clips of the matches, and I tell her: thikai cha, let the results speak, not the chest-thumping.

I’m no expert on the science of sex and sport, but I read the meta-analysis they’re all arguing over. Seventeen years watching night-shift numbers taught me to trust the data, not the shouting. If the study says most elite performances split along predictable lines, that’s what it says—thikai. Doesn’t mean a single girl from Sikkim with a dream hasn’t outrun ten boys on a muddy hill, because I’ve seen it with my own eyes on the way to the bus stop.

Seventeen years of overnight calls, and I’ve learned one thing: no algorithm can predict when a customer will suddenly start crying over a missing pizza topping. Thikai, I’ll take that over the esports kids who think 300 APM means they’ve earned the right to shout at their teammates. My daughter in Siliguri, she showed me this chess tournament online — blitz games, three minutes each, and the grandmasters tapping the clock like they’re slicing onions. It’s not play, it’s their night shift, but they get to see the sunrise on their own terms, hajur?

My daughter’s hostel-mate in Siliguri is a Tamil film editor, working all night on a 2026 release. She says he survives on tea and packets of murukku, just like us on the night shift. Makes me smile, hajur—same tired eyes, different mountain.