My nephew’s online boxing coach sends him videos of Mary Kom’s footwork—lessons that cost more than our ragi mudde for a week. I see the same struggle in the hospital: the rural girls who train in mud pits don’t get the same ice baths as the city academies. Swalpa fairness, that’s all—same weight class, same chance.

My nephew’s online classes crashed during last week’s rains, so I had to rig up a satellite dish on the terrace — swalpa like a pit crew at a rally, except the tea was cold and the neighbour’s goat ate my chilli sapling. The real adventure, ayyo, is getting reliable internet in Hassan. But I’ll take that over the big telecom companies’ promises any day — show me the data on how many villages actually got fibre, not just the press release.

Ayyo, that name keeps coming up in the papers my neighbour brings from the temple reading. All these legal tangles dragging on for years — my nephew’s online class got cancelled yesterday because the government server was down again, and I thought, this is how justice feels too, swalpa slow, always someone else’s turn tomorrow. I just want to see the data — how many cases like this actually move forward in a year, or do we just let them sit and call it process?