The mela came to Nani Tara's town every year in the week before Holi.
Meera smelled it before she saw it — roasting peanuts and hot jaggery
and the sharp sweetness of fresh cotton candy spinning on a paper
stick. Then the sounds hit: a dhol beating somewhere near the Ferris
wheel, bangles clinking on a vendor's wooden arm, children screaming
on a ride that spun them upside down, a man with a megaphone selling
miracle hair oil in a voice that could be heard three streets away.
"Come on, Nani!" Meera pulled Nani Tara past the entrance gate, where
a hand-painted sign read SPRING MELA in wobbly red letters, and into
the crush of colour and noise.
They ate first. Jalebis so hot that the syrup burned Meera's lip and
she had to blow on each spiral before biting through the crisp orange
shell to the soft, sweet centre. Then chaat — the tang of tamarind,
the crunch of sev, the cool shock of yoghurt — all in one bite that
made her eyes water.
At the bangle stall, Meera slid glass bangles over her wrist, red
and green and gold, cool and smooth against her skin. She held her
arm up and shook it. The sound was like tiny bells. At the next
stall, she pressed her nose into a basket of fresh mogra flowers and
breathed in until her chest was full of sweetness.
Her eyes leapt from a puppet show to a man spinning sugar into
birds, to a tower of brass lamps catching the late sun. Her ears
followed the dhol, then the megaphone man, then a girl singing a
film song off-key but with tremendous confidence. Her tongue still
tasted jalebi. Her fingers still felt the cool glass of the bangles.
By the time they reached the edge of the mela, Meera was dizzy.
Not sick-dizzy. Full-dizzy. Overflowing. She dropped onto a wooden
bench under a neem tree and let out a long breath.
"Nani," she said, "everything was happening at once."
Nani Tara sat down beside her and fanned herself with the end of
her dupatta. "Tell me — who was doing all that enjoying? Was it your
tongue that enjoyed the jalebi?"
"Well — yes?"
"Your tongue is just a piece of muscle with taste buds. It doesn't
know it's enjoying anything. Was it your nose that enjoyed the mogra?"
Meera frowned. "My nose is just... nostrils and cartilage."
"Exactly. Your ears are just drums and tiny bones. Your skin is
just cells. Your eyes are just lenses." Nani Tara tapped Meera's
forehead gently. "So who was sitting inside, looking through all
those windows at once? Who was the one saying 'this is wonderful'?"
Meera sat very still. The mela whirled and jangled behind her. The
neem tree dropped a small leaf onto her knee.
"Me," she said quietly. "Not my eyes or ears or tongue. Just... me.
The one behind all of them."
Nani Tara smiled. "Six windows," she said. "One watcher. That
watcher is what Krishna calls the soul."
