Good question. I am wondering what else I could be asked that question about. I need to look, and think, and make an inventory, a detailed one. I need to know what belongs to my baap, and what does not. The sadak is not among those things, I am certain. It is going two ways, does that not seem like that from the illustration? Is it from the road? Can’t tell. In this space you can never be sure. But it is a sort of two-way thing that is being indicated. But what am I even saying? Matt maari gayi! All roads go two ways, do they not? This way and that way. Unless you are at the end of the road and your nose, or whatever, is rubbing a wall. But even that road goes two ways, think about it. To the wall and the rubbing of the nose or whatever. And away from the rubbing of the nose or whatever. Jaaney bhi do.

We are not the kind, we don’t have roads. I mean we have roads, but we don’t have roads we own. I am thinking what they do with owning roads, what happens on them, I mean roads are public things, no? Even when there are names attached to roads, as they often are, roads are not owned by people whose names are appended to them, or their progeny, or whatever. Hai na? Yeh kaisa betuka sawaal hai? Sadak terey baap ki hai kya?

Nahin. No. For certain no, I will go to the notary public and give it to you on an affidavit, stamped and notarised. It is not my baap’s.

But. But. Hang on a minute. Let me think. A question, if I may: Sadak terey baap ki hai kya? Asked both ways, it becomes a question approaching a fragment of profundity: what belongs to who? If it is not yours, can it become mine? Does everything have to belong? Does everything belong to an owner? Or, put another way, does everything require to be owned? Suppose I asked of the wind or the sky. Is the wind your baap’s? Or is the sky your baap’s? And if it is, which part of it? Show me. We seek papers in this part of the world; kagaz dikhaao.

I felt and I saw rain pelting down on the road this afternoon and streaming a hundred and one ways, this way and that way, and any which way that it wishes to stream. I may have wanted to ask the pelting rain: sadak terey baap ki hai kya, naa aav dekha naa taav, bas baras padi? But what would that question have meant? It would have leapt back at me and mocked me and made me look the fool I am. Who asks a question like that? But too many ask a question like that. We think them idiots who ask such questions. So then there must be among us many idiots.

To go along this road

And do it right and straight

It could be an avoidable load

It takes more than a lawful gait.