Nani spread a fresh sheet of handmade paper across the low table, and Ravi settled cross-legged beside her, ready for a painting lesson. Moti circled twice and flopped down between them with a contented grunt.

"Today," said Nani, dipping her brush in deep blue, "I will teach you the real secret of Madhubani painting. Not how to make the lines. Something older than that."

She began to paint a fish — a great curving Mithila fish, all scales and swirls. But before she filled in its body, she paused and pressed one fingertip lightly to the very centre of the fish, where its heart would be.

"Here," she said. "Before I paint a single scale, I put something here. Can you guess what?"

Ravi peered at the blank spot. "There's nothing there."

"There is everything there," said Nani. "I put a little spark — a tiny seed of life. The same spark that is in you, Ravi. The same spark that is in me, and in Moti, and in the peacock I will paint next, and in the elephant after that. I do not paint a *thing*. I paint a *being*. And every being, however small, carries the same light at its centre."

She filled in the fish, and as her brush moved, Ravi could almost believe the little blue fish was breathing.

"Now you paint the peacock," she said, handing him the brush. "But before any feathers — touch the centre. Put the spark there first."

Ravi pressed his fingertip to the paper, the way she had, and felt suddenly serious. *The same spark that's in me.* Then he began to paint, and his peacock came out somehow more alive than anything he had drawn before, as though it were looking back at him.

They painted all afternoon — fish, peacock, elephant, a turtle, a tree heavy with mangoes, the sun itself. And each time, Ravi touched the centre first and placed the spark.

By evening the whole sheet glowed with creatures, and Ravi sat back and looked at them, and a strange warm feeling rose in him.

"Nani," he said slowly, "they all have the same light in them. The fish and the peacock and the elephant and the sun. It's the *same* light, just wearing different shapes."

"Yes," said Nani softly. "And once your eyes learn to see that spark in everything you paint — they begin to see it in everything you *meet* too. The cow in the lane. The old man at the well. The ant on the path. You start seeing the one light shining everywhere. And when you can see it everywhere, my child, you can never feel truly alone again. The divine is not far away in some temple. It is looking back at you out of every creature in the world."