Mandala elephant on a shoulder blade

The rains came early this year, so the elephant Gaja has been standing in the courtyard since Tuesday with her trunk raised, waiting for her paints. You asked in your last letter whether the work is still worth doing now that the bazaar sells printed cloth. It is. Yesterday I spent four hours on her left ear alone, pricking dots with a bamboo quill dipped in soot and linseed, then drawing the lotus rings inside them with a single hair from my own brush. Your grandfather taught me that a mandala is only a map of a place you already stand. Gaja's ear is the map of the temple at Pushkar, and her tusks are the two stairs that lead up to it.

The temple priest objected to the trunk. He said the raised foot made her look as if she were blessing the wrong god. I told him the god had never complained. He took the matter to the magistrate, who came yesterday in a blue turban and stood beneath her for a long time, then asked me to lower the trunk by one finger's width. I did not. I told him a finger's width is a lifetime to an elephant, and he paid me double to forget I had said it.

This morning Gaja lifted her trunk without any help from me and walked straight out through the gate, past the well, into the dust of the north road. The priest is furious. I am not. Every line I drew is still on her, and wherever she goes now, the whole pattern goes with her.

Your aunt, Meera