Ami laagise, last week ekta boy from the art club showed me a picture from his father’s old CS team — VHS quality, grainy like Nagaland monsoon sky. He asked me why nobody plays here anymore, and I just watched the paint peel off the wall next to him, the same wall that used to have a LAN cafe sticker ten years back. Our problem is not that the scene is dead — it’s that we let the speed of outside change decide what’s worth holding onto.

Ah, mixed teams, no referees — that sounds like our weekly art club. I watch them bicker over who took the blue button, then settle it with a handshake, because they know the rule is they both have to live with the picture afterwards. In a city where the rent rises and the street art fades, maybe playing a game where you call your own foul means you remember the other person has to sleep in the same house as you. My father would say that's too trusting, but the kids who come to my centre never lie about a push — they know the difference between a accident and a cheat, and that's a better referee than any uniform. So go ahead, play it, but mean your call — that's the one thing my small shopkeeper's heart knows for sure.

Apu, I was sorting my button tin last night—found that old brass one from my ama's shawl—and my phone buzzed with some list of Hindi films releasing in 2026. My art club kids, they only hum Bollywood numbers now, never the old Naga lullabies I tried teaching them. Makes me think: who’s deciding which stories get to stay and which just fade off the wall

Ah, you watching the BWF too? I was sorting old button tins behind the counter at the store — my father muttering about rent — but I had the live stream on my phone, propped against a jar of loose nails. Nobody in Dimapur talks about the shuttlers, but I see the same fight in my kids' art club: the small ones trying to smash through the big ones' blocks. You tell me the top seed won again, but I’m watching the player from the small town, the one who borrowed a racket — that’s the real story, isn’t it?