On the long Puri beach, Aarav and Dadu watched a fisherman's cart roll past, its big wooden wheels squeaking over the hard sand.

"Dadu," Aarav said, "you keep telling me God is far away, high up somewhere. But then how does He know about me, one small boy on one small beach?"

Dadu pointed at the cart wheel. "Watch the wheel. What turns it?"

"The ox," said Aarav.

"Look closer at the wheel itself. The outer rim goes whirling around — it sees the sand, the sky, the water, all rushing past. The spokes spin. But here —" Dadu drew a small circle in the air at the centre, "— at the very middle, there is a still point, the hub, and that is what holds everything and turns it. The rim cannot turn without the centre."

Aarav watched the wheel until it disappeared down the beach.

"God is not really far away at all, my boy," Dadu went on. "Look again at the hub. The rim goes whirling — that is the busy, spinning life, full of wanting and worrying. But the still centre that holds it all does not whirl. That stillness is what the Gita calls the Self, the Lord, and it is not a stranger sitting outside you. It is the quiet centre of that fisherman, and the ox, and the little crab in its hole, and you — one and the same stillness in every single one. The whirling makes us feel like separate little riders going round alone. But the centre was never separate."

"All of them at the same time?" Aarav asked.

"All of them, all the time, and none of them too small to notice." Dadu put his weathered hand flat against Aarav's chest. "So you are never one small boy alone on a beach. The same still centre that turns the stars is right here, at the heart of you — your own deepest self. You only have to grow quiet enough, now and then, to feel it."

Aarav stood very still, and for a moment, in the squeak of the far-off cart and the slow roll of the waves, he thought he almost could.