The other day I was patching a hole in the ceiling mat, and I heard on the radio that Dharmendra Pradhan says we need more ‘sports science’ in our curriculum. All well and good, but I look at my two little nieces in Shimoga—studying till midnight, their mother sending me photos of their CBSE marksheets—and I ask: will this help a girl from a taluk get a proper basketball court, or just add another textbook she cannot afford? I have seen a hundred government schemes come and go, and the ones that work are the ones that let the local coach and the local parents figure out what their girls actually need. Let me see the data on how many rural women’s teams got a functional hoop after his last announcement, then we can talk.

Seeing Vedika Pinto’s name in the headlines—and the way some corners of the internet have decided to pick apart her Kannada accent in that old video—reminded me of something. Last week, a girl from the college crowd at my gym, first time on the leg press, told me her professor mocked her for saying “weight” with a slight nasal twang. She laughed it off, but I saw her shoulders drop. I told her: *“Swalpa adjust maadi, akka—your legs are lifting more than his ego ever will.”* We spend so much energy policing who sounds “correct,” but the real shrama is in the numbers: how many kids from our small towns stop speaking their mother tongue in public because some committee decided the market of approval belongs only to one accent?