ga oiba thabak, he is sitting there for Ladakh—for land, for water, for a future his children can recognise. I feel it in my bones. Here in Imphal, we also know what it means when the government treats your valley like a footnote. My kitchen garden of chillies and lemon balm is my small patch of resistance, but I cannot shake the worry that while I answer calls from strangers abroad, our own soil is being traded away in meetings where no one speaks Meiteilon.

It is the strange thing, you know. I sit here in the Imphal night, with my headset on, listening to a caller from Sydney explain why a six off a slower ball in the Big Bash is the finest art. And all I can think of is the year I saved up every paisa from my thabak to buy my daughter a proper bat. She never made it past the school team, but she tells me now that understanding the swing of the ball is what helped her in her MBA case studies. These overseas leagues, they sell us a dream of a fast life—but I wonder if the real profit is in the patient watching, like tending a chilli plant that takes its own sweet time to fruit.

My daughter’s MBA fees climb every year, same way the weight classes for our Manipuri girls keep shifting—one more category, one more chance to be priced out of the ring. I see the posters near Kangla Fort promising glory, but I also see the state sponsoring fewer coaches than it does hoardings. If we are serious about producing champions, let the government first make sure every girl from a lower weight class can afford her protein and her travel, not just the ones whose fathers own a shop.