The sun had slid behind the Eastern Ghats, and the Krishna river had turned the colour of warm honey. Kiran and his friends sat on the flat rocks by the bank where the village children always gathered when the heat of the day was finally gone.

They had come down to swim. But somewhere between the swimming and the drying off, Kiran had started telling them the things Thatha had told him — about how the sun is the brightest of all lights and yet only a spark of God, about how the river they were sitting beside is one of the greatest rivers and yet only a thread of him.

"Tell the one about the mountain," said Lakshmi, hugging her knees. "The golden one that holds up the sky."

So Kiran told them about Mount Meru, and his friend Ravi jumped in to add the part about the planets circling it, which he had heard from his own grandmother, and then Lakshmi remembered a story about the great white elephant that rose out of the ocean of milk, and told that one. They were teaching each other now, passing the stories back and forth like the clay cup of buttermilk that went around the circle.

A frog began to sing. Then a hundred frogs. Fireflies came out over the water, blinking on and off like tiny lamps being lit and snuffed. The first stars appeared. And still the children sat, leaning toward one another in the blue dark, talking about God's glories — the biggest tree, the deepest sea, the longest snake, the first seed.

Kiran's mother called once from the top of the bank, then gave up and went back inside. None of them wanted to leave. It was strange, Kiran thought. They had played the same games a thousand times and grown tired of them. But this — telling and re-telling who God was, where everything came from, how the small things they loved were sparks of one great thing — this never ran out. The more they spoke of it, the gladder they felt, and the more there was to say.

That, Thatha had told him, is exactly what Krishna meant. The people who love the source most are the ones who can never stop talking about it, and never tire, and feel only fuller the longer they go on.