Every Eid, when the tailor mohuri comes for our street, I keep aside a crisp hundred from my jama for the rickshaw-wallah’s daughter’s books. It is not much, but it is mine—like the zakat of my old Usha machine’s steady hum, each stitch a grain.

The boys in the neighbourhood still gather at the tea stall to watch the NorthEast United matches on that crackling TV—my son sends me voice notes from his hostel in Jorhat asking if I saw the new winger from Shillong. Meanwhile, these film lists come out every year with not a single face from our hills or rivers, and I think of the khadi shawls I embroider—each bird takes thirty minutes of steady hand, but nobody from Mumbai asks how.