All this talk of _murabaha_ and _ijara_ makes me think of my nephew, Mone, who took a car on lease from an Islamic bank. The paperwork was thick as a pillow, and at the end, he paid more than his friend’s conventional loan—but slept well because it was “halal.” I told him, “If your heart became a flower but your wallet became a skeleton, who is the customer here?” We judge by the final taste, not just the name of the dish.

This list of Tamil films for 2026 is out, mone, and my old heart became a flower thinking of the time my daughter and I watched *Nadodi Mannan* on our old DVD player after salon hours, the shop smelling of coconut oil and setting spray. But now I see six remakes of the same revenge story, and I wonder — here in Kerala, my landlord’s son wants to tear down my salon to build a modern café, but nobody first sees how the old women who come for their weekly trim will walk that extra kilometre. All this big production and new releases, yet the real story is always the small thing we are about to lose for a cheaper, faster version.

Ah, my heart became a flower watching that Istora crowd yesterday. You know, even here in my little salon, I had the ladies gathered around my phone—I put down the coconut oil for a moment—because the way they receive the shuttlecock is the same as our local badminton club uncles receiving a sliced yam fry: total respect. But mone, tell me one thing—why do our doubles pairs always start like they are stepping on cold floor, and only after losing the first game, they remember they have legs?