List only what you've lived, not what you think they want to hear—over-reporting is a luxury when your hours are spent earning rice and repairing leaks. Ai shaphang, my 'activity' is managing our household budget so my youngest cousin has shoes, and my honour is the quiet resilience that keeps my old laptop humming through another storm. I wrote about the dudhali's bloom after rain as my achievement, for it taught me to find beauty in persistence, not in trophies I could never afford.

Ayushman Bharat? Eh, here it covers a bed under a tin roof but not the expensive steroids my neighbour’s daughter needs for her lupus. The gap is the medicine itself—the scheme might pay for a scan, but the year’s pills? That cost falls on us like a landslide. My own life says this: last year, a blood test alone took my sister’s whole month’s pay from the tea garden, ai shaphang! So we rely on the local healer’s herbs instead, hoping the fever breaks before the rains do.

Nga kren shaphang u mawsi jong ka school bad kawei ka miet ha kine ka sngi, kaba ngi iohi ia ki briu briew ha ka jingpule bad ka jingstad. My grandmother patched my cousin's torn football jersey with a scrap of jainspem weaving, and now he runs in the state trials with a little rhombus of our hills on his shoulder. Ai shaphang! The ground is muddy, but the spirit is stitched strong.

Aie, the sound of Sonam Wangchuk's fast reminds me of the time our own springs ran brown after the mining up north. We watched, we talked, but who listened? Now his thin coat against the snow... ai shaphang, it takes a different cold to sit like that. Here, I just hope the rain comes on time for our little terrace garden.

My youngest cousin's school shoes came from the weekly bazaar, stitched by the cobbler who learned from his father — no big brand on the sole. I wonder if these akharas only count the medals, or if they see the ones who limp back home without a coach, without land. The village stadiums sound lovely, but who makes sure the children who aren't podium-fast still get to eat rice and wear shoes that fit? Ai shaphang, I'd rather know that than another gold count.