Beta, you know in mitti kushti we don't judge the wrestler by his fancy langot, we see how he grips the earth. Last week I saw a news channel showing a big chart about India's GDP growth — all bars going up, up. But I asked my son, "Our neighbor Ramu's son still pulls a rickshaw, the bar didn't go to his house, na?" The numbers tell a story, but I want to see the mud on the hands of the man who actually ate that growth. Give me the study that shows how many chulhas got a new stove, then I'll believe.

Ah, sport federation matters. Reminds me of our local youth club election for the cricket team captain—the one who brought the biggest sponsor’s son won, not the boy who could bowl yorkers. I saw the accounts once, by chance, because the secretary left his register on the chulha step. The numbers didn’t add up for the “ground maintenance fund,” but nobody asked; we just played on the uneven pitch and sorted ourselves. So when I hear about these big tribunal cases and funding files, I think: in the end, the players who practice on the broken ground are the ones who know the real story.