Meera had watched her grandfather paint a thousand times, but today she really looked.

Dadaji sat on the floor of his workroom the way he had every morning of his long life, a cloth pichwai stretched before him. On it, slowly taking shape in deep blues and brilliant whites, was Shrinathji — the beloved child-form of Krishna, one arm lifted as if holding up a whole mountain, lotus eyes wide, surrounded by cows and peacocks and tulsi leaves.

"Dadaji," Meera said, "how many times have you painted him?"

Her grandfather smiled without looking up. He dipped his brush, touched it to the cloth, and a single curving eyelash appeared exactly where it belonged. "Since I was younger than you. The same form. Ten thousand times. Maybe more."

"Don't you get bored?"

His hand did not pause. "Bored?" He laughed softly. "When I was a boy, I painted him to earn praise. Then for many years I painted him to earn a living, to feed this family. Both of those were fine." The brush moved. "But somewhere along the way I stopped painting him for anything. I just paint him because — " he searched for the words " — because there is nothing else I would rather be doing. He is not the thing I make money from anymore. He is the thing my hands do without my asking."

Meera watched the small blue figure looking back at them from the cloth. She noticed something then. Her grandfather's eyes had the same soft, steady gaze as the painted ones. When he tilted his head, the figure on the cloth seemed to tilt too. The longer he had painted that one beloved form, the more he had quietly come to resemble it — patient, gentle, unhurried, content.

"It's strange," Meera said slowly. "It's like you and the painting are turning into the same thing."

Dadaji set down his brush at last and looked at her, surprised and pleased. "Now that," he said, "is a true thing, said by a child." He pressed his palms together toward the cloth. "Many people love God in many good ways — when they need help, when they are curious, when they want a blessing. All good, all noble. But there is a kind of loving where, after a long, long time, you no longer feel separate from the one you love at all. You don't reach for him. You rest in him."

He picked the brush up again. "That," he said quietly, "is where I am trying to live."