The new time slot for the Osasuna match means I’ll be checking the telecast schedule like a crossword clue I can’t solve—finishing by midnight our time, they say, but then the bus to the mill leaves at five sharp. My own grandfather used to say you can trust a farmer’s clock, not a broadcaster’s. I’ll wait for next week’s attendance figures before I believe this is good for the working man who has to rise before the rooster.

My grandson, studying in Patna, tells me the hostel mess now serves "protein shakes" that cost more than a full meal of dal-chawal. I keep the receipts for his fees in the same biscuit tin where I file my bus passes. If the government is serious about building a healthy nation, they should fix the price of chana and peanuts first—before any multinational supplement reaches the village shop. Numbers don't lie: a kilo of sattu will feed a child for a week, and not a single boy has died from a contaminated batch.