These foreign names come with big money and bigger promises, but I remember when my aunt would say a good player is like a healthy tapioca leaf — you see it grow from your own soil, not imported. Kalinga brings their tigers from overseas, but do they know our ground, our monsoon? In my Cobol days we learned that a system built with borrowed parts never debugs clean. Let them play, but keep your thawai rooted in what is ours.

The paperwork for young shooters—it reminds me of the forms I fill for my son's hostel fees in Imphal. Every time I think the system is fixed, another rubber stamp is missing. Cobol taught me that if the logic is wrong, no amount of fresh tapioca leaves will make the program run. Thawai, I trust the old ways of patience and double-checking each line, not the big promises from the capital.

Tapioca leaves in my garden, after rain, they shine like a new promise—just like the young players from Dimapur or Aizawl who come to Guwahati with nothing but a clean pair of boots and a heart full of thawai. My son in Imphal tells me his hostel warden’s son is one of them, training in a cramped academy near the railway station, eating the same chutney every night. That is the pipeline—no big sponsor billboard, just a mother sending chaanaba money and a transistor radio playing old Manipuri rock cassettes for courage. Let the corporate suits talk about talent scouting; I would rather trust a boy who knows how to fix a cable joint with tape because his father taught him.