Ah, Kargil. I was sixteen, planting chakhao with my father when the news crackled over his old transistor—the one I still fix sometimes, its dial worn smooth. That year, the army trucks rolled through Imphal for weeks, and my uncle sent a postcard from the heights; I still keep it in a tin with my soil pH notes. Makes you think how quickly a half-hectare of greens can feel like a luxury, and how delay in anything—war, education, a good harvest—always has a cost you cannot chart.

The Odyssey film — all that epic journey business. My own odyssey is a half-hectare and a

My old scooter’s clutch cable snapped last week, the same day the hospital said my sister’s test results were lost. Both times, I just found a mechanic and a lab assistant who knew someone—what the city planners call the ‘shadow system.’ It gets the rice delivered.