What would I know about my world? You tell me. It would be an audacity most unforgivable for me to tell you I know. Worse still that I may know better. Who am I? What would I know? Tell me. Tell me things that I need to know, and what I no longer need to know. You know. What am I to know? I feed the earth. I plough it. I seed it. I give it nutrient. Then I wait for the rain. Or the pump. It needs watering. It needs nursing. It needs taking care. Then I wait. And I look at what has come from all of that feeding and watering and nursing and caring. Then I return to it and reap what there is to reap. Sometimes it is a handful, sometimes there isn’t enough to fill a palm. Or two. And then I try to provide for the body what those hands are attached to, and have given. In the best manner possible, at the best price it is possible to fetch. But what would I know about all of this? You know best. Hum kis khet ki mooli hain? There’s no mooli like you. I hope you got that, Mooliji.

This business of ours, where did you arrive at our business from? I wonder sometimes. You are not a farmer. You neither have land nor till it. Right? You peddled retail stuff, on platforms, or such places, right?

Right. You are a retail person. Buy. Sell. At a profit. A commodity is a commodity. It comes and it goes. And it leaves you a profit. Dhandho! What would you understand, you stock market charlatan? You think money grows on crops?

For you it perhaps does. Which is why you are here. Looking for an opportunity. Looking for dhandho. You were right, you spoke that one truth among the million lies you daily speak. You have commerce in your veins. If you had blood where commerce is, you would probably have understood what it means to do what we do. We don’t sow coins and reap rupees; you do that perhaps, or want to do. We sow our labour and reap love. But how are you to understand, you who have commerce in your veins and not blood. (Are you, by the way, so blood-thirsty because your veins lack for blood? Just asking. Never mind. Don’t set your cops after me, please, because I know what your judges will do after your cops have done what they have been commanded to do. I was just joking, don’t take me seriously.

We are ordinary folks. We walk the spaces, we sprinkle random stuff on whim, we till and toil because what else is there to do, time needs to be occupied, you see, not everybody can bear the burdens of being VishwaGuru, and one day, voila, these things spring up. And the fields all get crowded, and so we clear them. And as a consequence of clearing the fields, we get this thing called a crop. Which feeds. And which, before it feeds, has a price. How this happens, how are we to know? You know best. What we have is merely the whim of passing time, an unmindful result of walking the fields and doing whatever follows the walking. It’s all very easy. A walk in the park. Isn’t that what they say for things that are easy?

Why don’t you come walk in the park with us, VishwaGuruji? Come get a sense of how it is to walk in the park. Get a feel of the park when it is bereft, and when it gets voluptuous with the gifts of walking in the park, and all that happens in between? Between the barrenness and the fulsomeness? Do you know what happens? You would know. Because you think we don’t. Someone should. Come then. Tell us. We do not know how this happens, this harvest of gold, what we call kanak, or gold. We think it’s what feeds us, you think it’s what feeds coffers. You know better. You are commerce. We are blood. But who are we?

Order me, oh reverend sire
Oh master of many degrees
I’ll even attest, promise by fire
That potatoes grow on trees.