Black and grey realism tattoo of the elephant-headed deity Ganesha wearing an ornate crown, across the back of a hand holding two pencils.

Ganesha portrait on the back of a hand

Realism · Hand · Black and grey · Photo

A hand is held towards the camera showing a detailed portrait of Ganesha, with a trunk running down between the fingers and a richly patterned ornamental crown above the head. The shading is smooth and layered, with strong contrast in the tusks, eyes and crown ornaments. The background is out of focus and the image is entirely black and grey.

Realism Hand Ganesha Elephant Deity Pencil

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lane up to Harrow Fold was shut by drifted snow on the third night of January, so the milk tallies had to be finished by lamplight in the back office. Meera had two pencils and no sharpener. Above the desk her grandfather had tacked a calendar from the Leeds feed merchant, and on it a painted elephant-headed god sat cross-legged with a pen held above a page. She had decided years ago that he was patron of stubborn sums.

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She counted churns aloud, because numbers came easier when she could hear them. Forty-one, forty-two. The first pencil snapped at the point and she swore under her breath in Tamil, then felt foolish for swearing at a god's picture. Her grandfather used to say the elephant was scribe to a sage who spoke without pausing, and that he asked only one thing in return: the dictation must never stop before the work was true. Meera had always thought that a strange payment for an epic. Tonight it seemed a fair one for a farm.

At half past nine the phone buzzed. The haulier in Ripon had cancelled, the road would be open by morning, and her uncle wanted the figures on the desk before the lorry came. She went back through the columns with the second pencil, whittling it with her penknife into a grey stub. The total came out seven churns short. She checked each line twice, then a third time, and found it in the column she had crossed out in October for the calf feed, a figure she had counted and then, out of habit, forgotten to add.

She did not cross it out this time. She wrote the seven in full at the foot of the page, underlined it, and sat looking at the calendar until the painted eyes seemed to agree with her. Outside, the snow kept settling on the gate, patient and unhurried, as if someone were taking down every word of it.