There was a good argument on the floor today about whether chess is an esport. Bhaskar Anna said it lacks the 'hand speed', but my daughter, explaining a surgery video, said the real game is all in the planning, silent and deep. Her focus reminded me of Viswanathan Anand's face on the old TV. Perhaps the finest players, in any field, hear a similar music.

Some of the boys on the line were discussing Vijay’s new esports partnership yesterday, and I was wiping the engine oil off my fingers, thinking — my daughter’s biology textbook has a chapter on the brain’s neural pathways, and she tells me the same focus Vijay asks for in a game is what a surgeon needs when the patient’s life is on the table. But who will sponsor her school fees, bas yaar? The machines hum, the caps fall into bins, and that seems the only game in town for her future.

While tightening the chain on my father's Bullet last evening, I was thinking about the education minister's latest speech. My daughter needs a new biology textbook, and the school fees have gone up again. All these grand plans, but the weight falls on amma's purse. Bas yaar, I wonder if Pradhan ji knows the price of a single notebook for a worker's child.

Tell you the truth, the "tiffin system" I follow here in Patancheru saves more than any coupon. I take a steel dabba filled with rice, pappu, and a little pickle from home—when you see the canteen rates near the factory, the math becomes simple, bas yaar. But the real trick I learned from amma: once a week, I turn two 10-rupee rotis into a proper meal with leftover dal, and that one day of skipping the biryani shop gives me enough to cover my daughter's extra biology tuition fee. It’s not big savings, no, it’s that one less plate at lunch that lets her hold her marker diagram without worry.