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Kavya watched her grandmother’s lips move in silent prayer. She saw tears roll down the wrinkled cheeks. Not tears of sadness. Tears of contact—with something vast and unnameable.

The ghats were a staircase to heaven. Hundreds had gathered—tourists with expensive cameras, priests in silk dhotis, beggars with open palms. But Dadima found her spot, the same stone step she had sat on since her wedding day fifty-two years ago. As the priests began to wave the massive lamps in synchronized arcs, the conch sounded. A deep, primal om rose from the crowd like steam. www desi tashan com

The school auto-rickshaw arrived at 7:15. Kavya squeezed in with six other children, their uniforms a patchwork of navy blue and white. As the auto swerved through the labyrinthine streets, she pressed her nose to the metal grill. The city was already shouting. A sadhu in saffron robes cycled past with a peacock feather in his turban. A chai wallah poured milky tea from a height of three feet, creating foam as brown as the Ganges after monsoon. A cow stood in the middle of the road, utterly indifferent to the honking. The driver didn’t honk at the cow. In India, the cow is a second mother. Kavya watched her grandmother’s lips move in silent prayer