It is a negotiation that will end with Rajeev secretly buying the bat the next day, then pretending to be angry about it for a week.

In the Agarwal house, like ten million other houses across India, life is loud, cramped, and impossible. And every single person, from the stressed father to the dramatic teenager, would fight to the death to keep it exactly the same.

“Beta, budget is tight this month.” “But Papa, my old bat is broken!” “It’s not broken. It has ‘character.’ Use character.”

Their mother, Neha, is the conductor of this chaos. With one hand, she flips golden dosas on a cast-iron tawa. With the other, she packs Kabir’s lunch—rejecting his plea for pizza and instead shoving a besan chilla (savory chickpea pancake) into his tiffin. “Eat like a king in the morning,” she mutters, wiping sweat from her brow, “even if the king doesn’t want it.”