day, I drew a square, a diamond, a circle, another diamond, and another circle.
Mrs. Narayan from across the street called me over. She was watering her roses, which were famous all over town for their size and fragrance. She attributed the success of her gardening to a singular devotion to Laxshmi, goddess of wealth and prosperity. On her dining-room walls were beautiful life-size murals of the goddess rising from a lotus, showering gold coins from her hands.
Mrs. Narayan and my grandmother had grown up together, neighbors until the time of Mrs. Narayan’s marriage. After her husband’s death, Mrs. Narayan had moved back to town. It was a ritual between our two houses that she sent over two roses for us each morning, one for our family shrine, one for my hair. I disdained her gift, thinking it too old-fashioned to wear flowers in my hair. My mother was the one fond of flowers, not I. My grandmother frowned at this—young girls, she believed, had a duty to adorn themselves.
“How is your grandmother?” asked Mrs. Narayan.
“Fine,” I said, looking at the ground. I will not cry, I told myself, I will not run into her arms. I stood still as she tucked a rose into my hairband.
“Pray to Laxshmi,” she said. “She is our benefactress.”
I wandered over to the library to see the latest development. I was not disappointed. Under the defensive WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE , someone had very neatly, in thick black paint, written this:
EVERYONE is responsible. It is ridiculous to excuse oneself in the face of a crime and a gross injustice. If you accept money from a thief, you participate in the robbery. By refusing to take action on acts of cruelty and prejudice, you condone the injustice. Silence is shame. Silence is the closed eye. Free one prisoner and you free yourself.
I made two more mandalas the next two days. The first one was in gold and blue and featured a box in a circle and another box and circle inside that. It looked like a television screen. The second one was better. I made a box and a circle as before, but this time I put a diamond in it, and then a box and a circle inside that. I painted it in four colors, and it seemed to be as powerful as Shiva’s third eye. He is the Destroyer; he is the Creator, For the first time in a long time, I prayed to the gods to help my grandmother, to stop her pain. I read aloud to her that evening, from Dickens, but she fell asleep before I had gotten very far.
Morning, and my grandmother was still asleep. There was a large lizard on the wall, staring at me with its ugly eyes. Lizards are good, my grandmother said, they eat mosquitoes, they bring good luck. But I didn’t like them; I thought they were creepy. When I was younger, I would shout for my grandmother when I’d seen one, and shewould calmly catch it between the straws of a broom and shake it outdoors. I was painting a mandala that was a dark, velvety purple, the deepest color. I smiled to think that my grandmother would cluck her tongue at the choice: Wear pink, she used to screech at me when I appeared in something dark, wear pink!
Now the lizard was staring at me and I fought an impulse to shout for my grandmother. She needed her rest. Somehow I knew it was important not to be distracted, that I continue to paint steadily. I connected line to circles, connected my grandmother to Mrs. Narayan to the armless man to Nelson Mandela. I would even connect the nasty lizard as well, for it would make my grandmother well. It must make my grandmother well. For how would I live without the shade of my green hill? How would I travel, how would I transgress, how would I troubadour my life away if there was no hill upon which to rest my head?
My grandmother recovered that summer. Yama, the god of death, decided to stay away, and I stopped drawing mandalas.
Five
I loved wandering around in my grandmother’s house, My great-uncle’s room was always cool, with gauzy curtains over the open window. There were no