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forward and squinted at the murti as if to make sure she was listening. “This mandir is my second home. I does come here and clean your altar and chant your mantras. I does come here and perform pujas with such devotion. How many
diyas
, clay pots, you think I light at your feet?” He frowned as if he were remembering. “Plenty—and that ain’t counting my past lives!” He stared directly into Mother Lakshmi’s marble eyes, daring her to disagree. “And see how lovely you look in that pink sari! Who does adorn you in such nice-nice clothes?” He arched a silver dishevelled eyebrow at Mother Lakshmi. “Is me self who does do it. Me self!”
    Anand sat blinking at the murti for some time. Silence loomed like a concrete wall between them. He sighed, letting the exhale whistle between puckered lips, and then, grumbling, unfolded his legs and hauled himself to his feet. When he took a deliberate step forward, a prickly sensation surged through his toes and shot across his sole. Anand swallowed a curse and shifted his weight into the other foot. He glowered at MotherLakshmi as blood rushed back into his smarting toes. Was She toying with him? He was in no mood.
    Anand marched to the altar and poured ghee from a jar into a freshly washed diya. Between thumb and forefinger, he twirled a cotton ball into a wick and drowned it in the clarified butter. When he set the wick ablaze with a match, the orange flame flickered in the small diya, elongating as it stretched toward heaven and then settling into a plump, upside-down teardrop. Anand gestured to the diya and then looked into Mother Lakshmi’s eyes. “You see? A next one. You paying attention?”
    He stooped and gathered a handful of flowers in his left hand from a taria he had filled from the small garden behind the mandir. “What you think people saying about me, Ma?” He placed a burgundy dahlia at her feet. “Them probably wondering how a devout pundit like me could raise a son to do such
nastiness
.” He hissed this last word as he tucked a delicate jasmine into the fold of a sari pleat. “I feel so shame.” He shook his head. “Shame, shame, shame. How Krishna could disgrace me so?” He threaded a few daisies into her gold crown with a practised hand. “How I could show my face to the people when my son do what he do with
she
?” He groaned as he slid an orange immortelle blossom between the marble fingers of Mother Lakshmi’s raised hand. Then he stopped and cocked his head thoughtfully. “How
you
could allow this to happen to me?”
    When the goddess was decorated with fresh flowers, Anand plucked three incense sticks out of their box and held them into the diya’s flame. As they caught fire, he waved the flame out with his other hand so that the orange glow dissolved into ribbons of fragrant grey smoke. He inhaled deeply and thendeposited the incense sticks in their brass holder at Mother Lakshmi’s feet to purify the air around her. He opened his arms, palms facing upward. “So what can I do? My reputation as a pundit, as a leading man in this district, is in jeopardy. My earnings is in jeopardy.” He pressed his right hand to his chest as if to soothe a sudden spasm of pain there. “And Krishna and this girl, they responsible. Tell me what to do.”
    Anand sat by the window again, folded his legs beneath him, interlaced his fingers in his lap and waited for an answer. He closed his eyes to meditate, but instead he drifted in and out of a restless sleep, waking sporadically to find his chin resting on his chest or his head lolling to one side. In those cruel intervals of wakefulness, Anand thought of the promise he had made to his own father: that he would be known as a well-respected, much-sought-after pundit and honour the Govind legacy born from six generations of learned Hindu priests. That memory was always followed by Krishna’s handsome face, sunny with the carelessness of youth. Anand rubbed the throbbing at his temples. Krishna was