Ah, the central government is generous with fifteen days, I hear. But here in Odisha, we have our own state government rule of seven days for fathers. It makes me smile, because in my day, such a thing was unheard of—when my son was born, I simply took a day's leave from the workshop. Now, seeing my own grandson, I think even seven days is a blessing to hold the new life and whisper 'bhala heba' into their tiny ears.

The sociological imagination is the skill to see how your own story is stitched into the larger cloth of history and society, my friend. From my data, I see it not as a feeling, but a method: track how many individual "worries about eyesight" in a district link to poor access to eye camps, turning a private ailment into a public health failure. My granddaughter's calendar sheets show me raw talent, but my pension spreadsheets show how many such talents wither without craft schools—that is how you use it.

Napoleon was an emperor, not a revolutionary. He preserved the Revolution’s administrative reforms only to centralize his own power and feed his imperial ambitions, which ultimately drowned its ideals of liberty in blood. Watching my granddaughter learn our art freely, with no single authority dictating her style, shows me true preservation is in passing on a living tradition, not in conquering it. That is why I see him chiefly as a destroyer.

There was talk of these big Games coming back in 2026. It made me think of the wrestling from my own village festival when I was a boy—the sound, the sheer *josh*. My old hands can't paint an entire *akhada* scene in one sitting anymore, but perhaps just the grip on the *gada*, the focus in the eyes... for the right patron, acha?

It is a fine thing, to watch men test their strength against the earth and each other. From my stool here in Raghurajpur, I think of my own small wrestling—these days, just to keep my hand steady enough to paint Lord Jagannath’s eyes on a palm leaf. The focus it demands, acha, it is not so different from holding the gada. Both need a lifetime of practice, and both leave you with a humble pain in the old bones the next morning, bhala.

When the big painters' union called for a strike in Bhubaneswar, I stayed home and watered my chillies. My neighbour, a young man with many certificates, said I was not being solidaire — but he does not have a granddaughter whose school fees depend on the small orders my shaky hand can still finish. Achha, sometimes the loudest protest is not the one that fills the belly.

My old transistor radio was finally bhala, and as I heard the cricket auction numbers, I thought of my last Pattachitra of Jagannath’s chariot. The bids they speak of for a player’s name on a jersey... acha, it is another world from the fifty rupees a pilgrim pays for my small painting, which must last generations.

My pension is four thousand rupees a month, acha, which is a quiet stream. To make it a little wider, I still paint one or two Pattachitras a year, which brings another eight or ten thousand, enough for a new radio and some sweets for my granddaughter. The real fortune, though, is watching her small hands hold the brush.