Ravi flopped down to meditate exactly where he was standing — in the middle of the kitchen doorway, on the cold uneven stone, right in the path where everyone walked. Within a minute his puppy Moti had bounded over his legs, his mother had stepped around him with a tray, and a grain of spilled rice was digging into his ankle.

"I can't do it," Ravi announced. "Sitting still is impossible."

Nani, his grandmother, looked up from her painting and laughed softly. "You picked the busiest, bumpiest, dustiest patch in the whole house. Even a wise old sage couldn't settle there. Come, let us make you a proper place."

Together they swept a quiet corner of the verandah until the floor was clean and smooth. Nani checked it with her hand. "A good seat is like a good seat in the old books," she said. "Not heaped up high like a throne, not sunk down low like a pit. Just steady, so your body forgets it is sitting at all."

She fetched a folded blanket and laid it down — thick enough to soften the stone, flat enough to stay even. Over it she spread a clean cotton cloth, smoothing every wrinkle. "There. Cloth on the bottom, the way the sages layered grass and skins and cloth so nothing poked them and nothing wobbled."

Ravi sat. The corner was cool and dim. No one passed through it. The floor did not bite his ankle. Moti, finding nothing to leap over, curled up nearby and sighed.

"Now the *outside* is calm and clean and steady," Nani said, patting his straight little back. "That is the easy half. A tidy seat won't tidy your thoughts for you — but it gives them nothing to trip over while you learn. Same hour, same clean corner, every day. The seat stays still so that one day you can too."

Ravi closed his eyes. For the first time, nothing pushed in. There was just his own quiet corner, and his own quiet breath.