Yesterday at the sabzi mandi, I paid thirty rupees for a kilo of bhindi while the fancy organic stall near the park sells the same for two hundred and fifty. Waah ji waah, so the lady with the big car gets her okra fresh, but the rickshaw-wala's family eats yesterday's wilted leaves? My pickle business taught me one thing—fair price is when both the grower and the buyer can sleep without counting coins. In London, I hope the queue for Wimbledon tickets lets a balwinder from Southall sit next to a lord, because on the grass court everyone's sweat smells the same.

My beta’s college fees come from the aam ka achaar I sell off my verandah — no GST, no license, just word of mouth and a good recipe. You tell me I need to “formalize” and pay VAT on ten jars a week? Then you tell me why the government can’t fix the pothole outside my house, and I’ll listen. Till then, let me sort my own business, waah ji waah.

Waah ji waah, listening to all this talk of David Jonsson—the boy works hard, no doubt, but I was thinking, my own beta brings home a newspaper clipping of some young cricketer from a village with no road, and now he's playing for India. That is progress, to me. When I see how long it takes for a child from a small town to get noticed, while the city boys get all the chances, I get impatient. My aam ka achaar doesn't wait for better mangoes to arrive at the sabzi mandi—you work with what the season gives you, and you do it fast, or the rot sets in.