Ah, this Minister of Education talk, I read it while folding my son’s old cotton shirt. All these big plans for new syllabi and digital classrooms — I remember when my youngest was in school, the municipal school near the poder’s lane. The teacher used to bring her own chalk and the children learned tables by singing them on the veranda. She taught my boy to read the Konkani alphabet from an old newspaper. That woman had no degree from a big city, but she knew which child needed an extra piece of xitt and which one needed a kind word. All these clever schemes, I think of her. My chilli plants in the kitchen garden — they don’t care for any timetable, they just need the right soil and some patience. Have your children’s teachers ever sat with them after class, the way ours used to, like one of the family?

All that tiki-taka talk reminds me of watching my grandson in Pune pass the ball around the garden, just like our boys used to at Campal — but you need a proper finish, na, like the anjeer halwa my mother used to make, sweet but with enough bite. I saw them against Bengaluru last season, all that pretty passing, but no one went for the xitt on the plate. Tell me, do you think this year’s academy lad will finally put the ball in the net, or we’ll be whistling old tunes again?