The morning of the mela, Meera could hardly sit still.

The great fair had come to Nathdwara, spilling along the road below the Shrinathji temple. There were stalls as far as she could see — bangle sellers with glass that flashed every colour, a man frying hot jalebis that hissed in golden oil, puppet-makers, balloon-sellers, a fortune-teller's parrot that picked cards with its beak.

"Remember," said Dadi, smoothing Meera's plait, "we have come to see Shrinathji. The darshan first. Everything else after."

"Yes, Dadi," said Meera. She fully meant it.

But then her cousins arrived, and the morning broke into a hundred pieces.

Ravi tugged her toward the toy stall — he wanted a wooden horse on wheels. "Come, you have to see this one, it really rolls!" So they ran to the toy stall. There little Anu started crying for a balloon, so they ran to the balloon man. Meera bought a glass bangle because it was the exact blue of a peacock's neck. Then there was a stall of sweets, and a stall of whistles, and a man who could make a monkey dance, and each one needed exactly one coin, just one, and her little cloth purse grew lighter and lighter.

By noon her hands were full — a bangle, a whistle, a paper windmill, a sticky sweet — and her purse was empty, and her feet hurt, and she felt oddly hollow, the way you feel after eating too many sweets and no real food.

Dadi found her sitting on a step, surrounded by her little treasures, looking glum.

"Did you see Shrinathji?" Dadi asked gently.

Meera's face fell. She had not. The whole morning she had chased one small wish after another — this prize, that prize, each tugging her a different way — and she had completely forgotten the one she had come for. The bangle was already losing its shine. The sweet was finished. The windmill had a bent blade.

"I ran to everything except Him," she said quietly.

Dadi took her hand. "It happens to everyone, beta. There are a hundred little things that say, 'Come here, wish for me.' And each gives you something small that ends. But the one we forget to visit — He is the one all the wishes were really pointing toward."

They climbed the temple steps together. And Meera, her hands still full of fading prizes, finally stood before Shrinathji — and felt, for the first time all day, completely full.