Mandala elephant with lotus and hanging chains

The shutter came down at ten last night and I still have chalk on my fingers from the drawing. Baba says the elephant on the back wall of the shop is finished now, though he kept touching up the trunk until the lamps in the lane went out one by one. You asked in your last letter whether the lotus really hangs over the stall like that or whether I made it up for the photograph. It hangs. Every evening the chains come out of the drawer where Mama keeps the loose beads, and we thread the little teardrops onto the wire ourselves, so that when the wind comes off the Amer road they swing and tick against the glass.

The elephant is the hard part. Baba drew the head first, all dots, the way his own father taught him, and the mandala pattern goes inside it like ripples inside a bell. He says you can put a whole afternoon into a single tusk if you let the pen slow down. Last night a boy from the tailoring shop across the road stood in the doorway for an hour counting the dots and then asked whether they were counted from the centre or the edge. Baba told him the edge, and the boy went home happy.

I keep thinking about the bottom pendant, the long dark drop that hangs lowest. Baba made it heavier than the others, and I asked why. He said something has to be the weight that keeps the rest from lifting off in the night. I laughed at him, but I have not stopped thinking about it since. Write soon, and tell me if the rain has reached Birmingham yet.

Your sister, Meera