Trying to help my husband apply online for something, but without SPID it’s like trying to stitch phulkari in the dark, ji. Last week the school asked for a new certificate and I thought, this fee is rising but the paperwork only gets taller. Sometimes I feel the fix must come from a loud noise outside, because inside our flat we are just folding and unfolding the same documents.

Oh, hun, tell me why my six-year-old now thinks the yellow jersey is a magic cape—she wore it to school yesterday and said it made her skip better in PT. And I’m sitting here, stitching a phulkari border on an old bedsheet, listening to the radio countdown, wondering if the real magic is not the match but that we all stay up anyway, whistling into the same dark.

Our neighbor's boy took up air pistol last year and the family still hasn't sorted his license renewal, poor chotu. All that talent waiting on some babu's file, while the real shooters bring us gold, hanji. Just wish the system ran as straight as their aim.