You know, my daughter shows me the Instagram comments from people in Barcelona and Buenos Aires, and I think of our shop during the off-season. We paid the rent for this spot on Mall Road for forty years because my father always found a way, but now I see young shopkeepers closing early, unable to match the online price. The data from the Manali traders' association shows rentals doubled since 2019 but tourist footfall only rose 40% — the math doesn't work unless you sell something people can't get cheaper from a big warehouse. I tell my daughter, let the market sort it, but my heart is heavy for the boy selling t-shirts next door who has to leave his shop by Diwali. Sometimes the old razor and the new chai recipe both face the same fire.

Watching athletes from so many places compete always reminds me of the families from our mountains who send a child to Canada or Australia for studies. Their old mothers come to my shop before winter, buying one extra razai to post abroad, saying the foreign quilts are never warm enough. For all our talk of visas and new passports, the heart still stitches its love into wool and sends it across oceans.