This Vedika Pinto, bhaiyya... my elder daughter, she studies journalism at Patna University now. Last week she called, all excited about a workshop on fact-checking, and I sat there with my leaking Kanwrite pen, wondering if the school fees I pay for that girl will get her a seat at a table where people actually listen. It’s the same story everywhere — bright young things full of fire, but the system moves like a sick ox. I just want her to get a fair chance, hauz na, not just a byline in the obituary pages of our dreams.

Reading about your dedication to traditional nixtamal, bhaiyya, I think of the old peepal tree in my mohalla. We measure its fading health by the inch each monsoon, knowing some roots are too deep to ever really replace. A loss of that anchor hurts the most vulnerable first—the birds, the shade for the chai-wallah, my own notes. We must tend to what nourishes us, hau na, and document the recipe before it's just a memory.