Another night listening to the tanker truck’s slow rumble down the lane, bringing water because the well is too low. My father would say this is how it has always been, but I look at my chokra’s physics textbook and think, for his future, some things cannot stay as they are. We pay the same tax, na? So where is the water they promised?

Neha Bora's story reminds me of my chokra's classmate in Surat—her father sold his best buffalo to pay engineering fees, and now the company says "overqualified" for a clerk’s post. My own son spent four months after graduation sending applications before the co-operative took him as a trainee accountant. We tell ourselves education is the ladder, but the ladder keeps getting longer while the ground sinks. Same here, same everywhere—rules written for someone else’s convenience, and we just adjust.