No, it’s not that, it’s not what you think or comes straightaway to your mind. Neither the one thing nor the other. I realise both look, in their own ways, like something and something else, they remind you. Aha! The broom! So that is what it is, gotcha! Ahaaaaa! The hand. No mistaking it, this one is for old time’s sake, the one and the same. You are correct. The broom. The hand. But there is no Aha! or Ahaaaaa! There is the broom. There is the hand. There are just those two things. Nothing more. What you attach to them are your attachments. And your attachments are your things, don’t offload them on others if they turn out not to be things that your attachments had made them, be sure there will be nobody else to blame.

You mistake things for what they are not. They could be, agreed, but they are not. The mistake is yours. And you shall come to bear the consequences of the mistakes you commit by taking things on, what’s it called, face value. As in, you assume what you see is what it is. You need to be smarter. Or you need to suffer. Get what I mean? No? You will, in due course of time. Mistakes go nowhere, they are like boomerangs, they come back at you.

You get things wrong, the fault is yours. And whatever follows you shall own up. I mean if you call chingri a fish just because it inhabits the waters and gets caught the same way as most fish, what is one to do? Chingri is not fish. It is more like a water insect or a creepy that crawls the waters. What is it called? Crustacean. Right. You might want to run a spell-check on that, I am never sure about some things. I am sure, though, that chingri isn’t fish. If it is then the black rooster laid the eggs I had for brunch this pre-noon. Don’t ask me how. Or where from. Don’t ask me what part it was — that received the founding elements of the eggs and that eventually laid them for being picked and cracked and had for brunch. Don’t ask me. Ask yourself — how can chingri be called fish??!!

You see a fellow use expletives, abuse with abandon and you believe it is a positive thing — Passion! You see a fellow wreak injustices on you, be harsh and cause havoc around you and you believe it to be a thing of strength and power. You see someone unaffected by your (lowly) circumstances, unmoved by your tragedy, and you believe it to be a thing of profound detachment. You plead before someone and the someone doesn’t yield and you believe it to convey firmness. Then, when it becomes too much to bear, all of those things that you thought good things, you begin to flail about and complain. Nobody’s listening. You got it wrong; look again, try and get it right.

Oh, it did do the sweeping

When the broom went swooshing

But you could go asking why

Nothing matches haath ki safai.