Before dawn, the valley below Kurukshetra was a bowl of darkness. A young water-carrier named Vidha picked her way along the riverbank, feeling for the path with her bare toes. She could hear the river but not see it. She could smell the cookfires of the camp but not find them. Shapes loomed and dissolved — was that a boulder, or a sleeping ox, or only her own fear wearing a costume of night?

She set down her clay pots and waited, because waiting was wiser than walking blind.

Then it happened the way it always happens, and never stops being a small miracle. A thin line of gold appeared along the eastern ridge. The line widened. And all at once the sun lifted its head over the hills, and the valley simply — appeared.

The boulder was a boulder. The ox was an ox, chewing slowly, entirely unbothered. The terrifying shape near the water was a heron, standing on one leg. Nothing had changed in the valley. Every stone and tree and animal had been there all along, exactly where it was. The only thing that had changed was that now there was light, and with light, Vidha could see what was true.

She laughed out loud at her own night-fears, picked up her pots, and walked the path easily.

Krishna, in his chariot, was telling Arjuna about a different kind of sunrise. "Ignorance," he said, "is like that darkness. It does not put new things into the world — it only hides what is already there. We stumble. We mistake herons for monsters and friends for strangers. And then knowledge rises in the heart like the sun over the ridge, and suddenly we see what was true all along: one Self, shining in every living thing, the way one sun shines on every stone in the valley."

Arjuna looked east. The real sun was climbing now, gilding the spear-tips of two great armies, touching every face on both sides with the same warm, impartial gold.

He understood. Light does not choose where to fall.