The rice was tall and golden, and Hari Uncle stood at the edge of the paddy with Aarav, both of them grinning at the heavy, nodding grain.

"Uncle, you did it!" said Aarav. "You grew all this rice. You're the best farmer in the village!"

Hari Uncle laughed and shook his head. "Did I now? Come, let me show you something. Let's count what it really took to grow this rice. Hold up your hand."

Aarav held up his hand, fingers spread.

"First finger," said Hari Uncle, "the field itself. Without good ground to stand on, where would the rice grow? No field, no harvest. The field is the seat, the place where everything happens."

Aarav folded down his thumb. "Okay. The field. What's two?"

"Second finger — the farmer. Me, and you, and everyone who planted and watched and worried over it. The doer. Without someone to do the work, the field just sits empty."

"Three?" said Aarav, folding another finger.

"The tools. My plough, my sickle, the bullocks, the buckets, my own two hands and eyes. The instruments. You can't dig a field with a wish; you need a plough."

"Four!"

"The effort. All the bending and lifting and walking — day after day, month after month. The sweat. The early mornings. The striving. So much striving."

Aarav had one finger left. "And five, Uncle?"

Hari Uncle's face went soft, and he looked up at the wide sky. "Five is the one no farmer can buy or build or force. The rain. The sun. The seasons turning just so. The seed somehow knowing how to sprout. Call it providence — the divine. The part that is given, not made. I can plough and plant and toil from dawn to dark, but if the rain does not come, there is no rice. That last finger is the Lord's."

Aarav looked at his folded hand — five fingers, five causes — and then at the golden field.

"So when you said you grew the rice..."

"I told a small lie," Hari Uncle admitted, smiling. "The field, the farmer, the tools, the effort, and the rain — all five grew this rice together. Take away any one, and we'd be standing in an empty, dusty patch. That is why I never strut about and call the harvest mine alone. I did my part, one finger of five, and I'm grateful for the other four."

Aarav looked at his own hand a long time. Then he opened it wide toward the rice, the way Dadu opened his hands toward the sea, and felt very small and very glad all at once.