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to find to her love once more.

We don’t know how to be a family. Although I have forgiven Shiv, and Ganesh does not remember his beheading, the memory of violence lingers, a bloodstain refusing to be washed away. Shiv tries to earn our trust again by being more present, wandering off less, even in his own mind, and paying attention to our every word and need. Ganesh is still having nightmares, and Shiv is always the first to respond, singing songs about me to soothe Ganesh back to sleep.
    Jai Jai Devi Girija Matha
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Jai Jagadambey Pranava Swarupini
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  Ashta Bhujangini Akhilaa Dhari
    Jai Yogeeswara Hrudaya Vihari            
    He does not understand that there are still days when I cannot bear to look at him, that it might be best for everyone if he returned to his former, mostly removed self.
    At times, it is hard to look at Ganesh too. The knowledge of where his head comes from is not only a reminder of Shiv’s actions, but it also makes it difficult for me to see Ganesh as one complete being. I recognize his body, the one born from my own, but not his foreign, animal head.
    The other gods and celestial beings are not receptive either. Although anyone related to Shiv could be perceived as strange, however revered, Ganesh seems to push the limits of acceptance. I have even heard rumours that the moon mocked Ganesh, particularly his size. (I will obliterate the moon right out of the solar system if these rumours are true.)
    Ganesh loves to eat. He befriended a mouse after an incident when both of them fought over the last modaka, only to bond over their common sweet tooth. Together, they consume all the daily offerings that are left at our doorstep by demigods and humans who seek our blessings. A friendship with a rodent only amplifies Ganesh’s supposed strangeness, but if the others would only look more closely, they would behold a tender heart, able to love regardless of size or status or expectation. If I could reconstruct my own heart, I would make it identical to his.
    I can’t help but be mesmerized as I watch Ganesh eat. With every bite, the unrestrained joy in his eyes seems to grow once it reaches his belly, pushing it outward. I can almost taste the ladoo, jalebi, and rasgulla in my own mouth, the sweetness spreading throughout my core. Watching him eat unifies his head and body for me and allows me to see him as one.
    Lately, I find myself wondering if this is partly what he has been trying to do for himself as well—using food to build a body in balance with his head.



In elementary school, he and his classmates drew the sun identically—an uneven circle in a top corner of the page with jagged triangles around the entire circumference, filled in with yellow crayon, and a smiley face drawn on it with an orange crayon. As she slept, he thought that, if he were to draw the sun now, it would be her face, not yellow but the colour of palaces in Jaipur. Her upturned lips that smiled even while she dreamed, not orange but the shade of eggplants, her crown of curly hair replacing the triangles, her eyes that were stars in their own right.
    But why draw her face when I can look directly upon it? he wondered. Instead, something about her face made him want to sing. This response was more concrete than melody; it was a lyric too. A melody that had not yet been sung and a lyric not yet written.
    Quietly humming, he followed the lines of her neck down to her shoulders, clasped by his hand, his arm around her back, their bodies held together by her white sheets. If he squinted slightly, together they appeared to him like a sea of brown rolling over and under white clouds.
    He remembered trying to figure out what kind of brown she was when they first met. The shape of her nose gave away her Muslimness, but he wondered what type of brown girl