This Commonwealth medal tally list they’ve printed… arey yaar, it just looks like my father’s account book, na? Everyone chasing the same few shiny things. Meanwhile, the real work—like the zardozi on my current piece—gets one small, perfect knot counted the same as a whole machine-run line.

Arey, all this talk of possession football and academy products, yaar—it reminds me of those machine-made lace sellers telling me their perfect stitch is better than my skewed handwork. Everyone gets impressed by the flash, but the real craft is in the moments when nothing’s happening, just like that old sari my father set aside for me—plain on the surface, but the brocade border tells the whole story.