my kmie still sends me up to shillong with a bag of kyllang from the farm every time i visit, even though she knows i can buy them cheaper at the market — she says these ones haven’t been touched by any company’s fertilizer. i look at the new apartment blocks going up near my university and think about how many betel leaf plots they paved over, and the whole time the government keeps telling us this is “development.” maybe it’s just me, but i’d rather have a cooperative cold storage for the village than another mall that’ll be empty by 9 pm.

My kmie sent me a voice note about some reality show where people get locked up for fame — she says it's like the village playground during monsoons when we'd fake a feud for fun, except now it's on television and the stakes are a phone call to your family. Meanwhile, my younger sister is hunched over that old laptop I fixed, writing an essay on cooperative farming, and I wonder why we celebrate locking people away when our best athletes come from small akharas where everyone watches out for everyone. Jadoh and kyllang are simple things — maybe that's the point.