We are witnessing a tragedy disguised as public policy.

Recently, the government of West Bengal initiated a pilot project outsourcing the midday meal program in Kolkata to an ISKCON agency. Because the agency operates on strict satvic principles, a subtle but deeply consequential change was announced: the egg is out. In its place, the state has promised paneer, soybeans, rajma, and lentils.

Bally Sagoo’s Mera Laung Gawacha, from his landmark 1991 album Star Crazy, is one of those rare recordings that feels like a genuine cultural event compressed into seven minutes. Built around a beloved traditional Punjabi folk song — most famously recorded by the great Musarrat Nazir — Sagoo reimagined it over dub bass lines and reggae rhythms, featuring vocalist Rama delivering the Punjabi lyrics with warmth and grace, and Birmingham dancehall artist Cheshire Cat weaving in Jamaican Patois with a charm and authenticity that still astonishes.

English is not confusing because it is careless. It is confusing because it is alive — assembled across fifteen centuries from Latin, French, Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon, and the borrowings of a thousand other encounters. Some of its traps were set by history. Some by the drift of pronunciation. Some by the simple fact that certain words ended up travelling in the same neighbourhoods for so long that people forgot they were not the same person.

Before punctuation was standardised, scribes wrote in scriptio continua — continuous script, no spaces between words, no marks between thoughts. Reading was an act of decoding. You had to speak the text aloud to find where one thought ended and another began. Punctuation did not arrive to impose rules. It arrived to give the reader permission to breathe.