They’ve come to build the way that leads home. Dust blows into their face by a lone gust. The fires are lit, the stone and gravel brought and thrown into a pit. Tar drums quiver in the glowing fires as the horizon shimmers. In the sweltering haze, chewing tobacco, they wait until they venture to gaze into the drums to see the molten thing that’ll be swept upon the stone upon which the gravel shall cling like skin to bone. Flushing red they set to work upon the bed, dumping layers of gravel and tar, so that we know this’ll be a bar to stop the stone from being plucked out by strangers unknown. Then the roller purrs, starts to roll, so that one who is near hears the crunch of tar, gravel and stone. The hiss of steam, the thump of machine and not that of metal alone. 

So back and forth it moves along, so back and forth. 

At last we view something smooth and straight which we recognise due to its hue. Blackish tons of a hardened collaboration disappearing into the distance shall serve to hoard our guttural vehicles for rides on this hard board. Thus inaugurated we shall take pleasure to eject our betel chewed and grated on a new ground where children laugh and play as if on a merry-go-round. On a summer afternoon the old timers come to sit on the heated surface, praising it, as if it were a boon. This noisy thoroughfare blends well its colour with the droppings of a mare. 

People get activated by the appearance of this dark belt in times which are no longer dated.

[An earlier version appeared in The Thumb Print Magazine]