Ah, to tell you the truth, I still panic a little and have to draw it out. If the problem has "more" or "total," I add; if it has "less" or "left," I subtract. But my real test? I think of my daughter's college fund. If I save five hundred rupees each month, that's multiplication. If I must divide a vial of insulin between two patients, God forbid, that is division. The words of the problem tell you, but the heart understands only when it's your own 'xorai' of rice to measure.

You cannot, beta. Only the full IB Diploma is recognised by our universities here, unlike CBSE where you can sit for individual subjects. I know because I priced it out last year for my own daughter—those IB certificates are expensive but useless here, while CBSE lets her choose a stream. So we went with CBSE, and my little savings account breathes easier.

In my coaching class, they say it's for encouragement, but I see it makes the boys think we're a different category altogether. At my last tournament, I beat the top-seeded boy in the open section, and he still asked if I was aiming for the "women's" title. That separate list tells him, and sometimes us, a story that isn't true—that my chess is defined by being a girl, not by my calculations. I fight for the open board, not a separate ladder.

It can stop working because your body makes antibodies against it, or the disease just changes its path. But for me, the bigger reason is the cost—when you cannot afford it consistently, you skip doses, and *then* it truly fails. My own Humira was a miracle until I had to stretch out the injections for my daughter's fees; now it’s just a very expensive reminder in the fridge. So sometimes the ‘loss of response’ starts in your bank account, not in your blood.

Ah, that old heartache of availability. It often comes down to different approval schedules and companies not registering drugs here if they don't see a big market. I had to import a specific paediatric antibiotic for my son when he was small. The real lesson? Find a compassionate doctor willing to sign the import licence application—your local chemist can then navigate the actual import from a licensed supplier abroad, but that doctor's signature is the key that starts it all.

Ragging in first year hostels was not some fun 'bonding' for us; it was fear, humiliation, and sleepless nights. UGC rules exist on paper, but seniors made us hide the helpline numbers, saying complaints would ruin our hostel life. I know because my own *gamosa*, gifted by my mother, was taken and 'initiated' with stains I could never wash out—that silence cost a piece of home.

They say phytoplankton make half the world's oxygen, but when I'm diving here, seeing that green haze stretch to the horizon, I believe it's more. A bloom starts when the water is just right—sun and nutrients stirred up—and ends when it's eaten or the sea runs out of food. My life underwater shows me they are the true lungs of this place, not the forests. I think of it like my daughter's savings: tiny things, piled up quietly, keeping everything alive.

To understand tonicity, think of the raisin as a cell—in hypotonic solution, it swells; in hypertonic, it shrinks; in isotonic, it stays the same. The dried raisin in water is actually a hypertonic raisin placed in hypotonic solution, so it absorbs water and plumps up. But in the wards, I've seen too many patients come in with swollen feet from improper saline drips, because someone forgot that our bodies aren't just simple raisins in a bowl. The theory is clean, but the practice… it’s why I double-check every IV bottle, even when the junior says it's fine.

Watching Ankita’s match on my phone while the fish tenga simmers. Reminds me of my daughter practicing her serve against our damp wall—that same determined frown. I’m saving my data pack for her finals next week, but for now, both our girls are fighting.

I was watering my tulsi this morning, the one that survived the damp this year, and thought of Mirabai Chanu—how she lifts not just the barbell but the whole weight of a small town's hope. My own weight is lighter: a daughter's school fees, father's blood pressure medicine, the slow drip of the monsoon wall. But we both know the careful, patient work of building strength rupee by rupee, rep by rep, until the load feels like a gift.

Saw the young ones setting up a table tennis board in the clinic's common room during lunch. Reminded me of my daughter trying to teach me a backhand, her laughter filling our little balcony. Next time, I'm bringing my good gamosa to wipe the sweat – these plastic clinic towels are useless.

I saw a young boy in Nehru Park playing a flawless game of kho kho with only a torn gamosa as the boundary marker. If our committees could support that raw talent as efficiently as the market fills my pharmacy shelves, we would have champions. For now, his mother’s proud smile was the real outcome.

Seeing that young Meghalaya girl bowl the other night—Remdika, was it?—I thought of the bottle gourd seedlings I coaxed through last monsoon on my balcony. The damp nearly rotted them, but they pushed through. The auctions will pay what they pay for big names, but I’d rather watch a no-name with a raw swing and nothing to lose than any committee-picked squad. Let the market decide who gets the purse; my savings grew slow, but it’s the steady hands that don’t drop the catch.