Before I can pull my leg on, he's standing outside my bedroom door, saying, "I wanted to make sure you were okay."

I feel caught unawares, holding my unnatural limb in my hands, like a murderer dismembering a corpse.

Pain from my phantom limb pierces me.

As if a million fire ants are stinging my nonexistent skin.

Govinda runs to my side.

"Veda? What's wrong? Tell me."

"My right foot hurts."

Gasps punctuate my words.

I grimace with pain from the ghost neither of us can see.

"Ever had your leg go to sleep?

Go numb for a while and later tingle back to life?

Like that. Only my leg's amputated.

So it hurts worse."

Govinda kneels.

"Where's the pain?" He molds my hand onto his. "Show me."

I guide his fingers over my ghostly foot.

I watch him pressing my invisible ankle, rubbing my invisible instep, kneading my invisible toes as though he can sense it as clearly as I can.

My ghost pain fades.

Bizarre.

"Thanks." I shudder, feeling like a monster.

A half leg of my own, an artificial leg that can never feel, an imaginary leg taunting my brain, and one normal leg.

"I'm a four-legged beast.

Not a dancer."

"The divine dancer has four arms,"

Govinda says.

He chants, "Yatho hasta thatho drishti; Yatho drishti thatho manah; Yatho manah thatho bhaavah; Yatho bhaavah thatho rasa."

The hand leads the eyes; the eyes lead the mind; the mind leads emotional expression; emotion leads to experience.

No mention of feet ghostly or real.

Govinda says, "People forget what they see onstage.

They remember only how deeply you touched their feelings.

Akka can dance even if she's seated the entire time.

The best dancers can move an audience without once moving their own feet."

Govinda flattens my palms, fingers together, straight except for the thumb; shaping my hand into Pataaka hasta-my first hand word- a symbol that can show many things.

He places my palms together like the two leaves of a closed door.

Turns them gently apart to show the door opening.

Then he links one of his hands with one of mine, interlocking our thumbs, forging them into the wings of the divine eagle, Garuda.

Our feet are still. But we're dancing.

Our fingers flutter.

Our wings flap.

Our divine eagle flies.

Higher and higher.

Glides.

Soars.

THE COLOR.

of

MUSIC.

Outside the window of akka's study, gray clouds smear the sky like ash.

I tell Govinda, "I wish we didn't cremate our dead.

So I could at least have a grave to visit.

But my pa scattered Paati's ashes in the Adayar river, as she wanted."

Govinda doesn't give me the usual reply- that to hold on to someone's mortal remains is to dishonor their eternal soul.

Instead he says, "Would you like to go to where her ashes are, Veda?

The river-mouth is near here."

Govinda walks me to the Theosophical society-a green oasis in the city- along the banks of the Adayar river.

Scattered inside the grounds, between acres of trees, are a few old Victorian villas and several places of worship: a church, a mosque, a synagogue, a Hindu temple.

Govinda and I stand together on the sandy sh.o.r.e of the Adayar estuary, where the river that bore Paati's ashes rushes toward the sea.

I think of a prayer Paati used to say, that each soul has a different path to reach G.o.d just as each river takes a different course to the one great ocean.

"Maybe Paati's soul is with G.o.d and I can't sense her presence because I haven't figured out what G.o.d is," I tell Govinda.

A light drizzle wets the earth. Raindrops split sunlight into bands of separate color.

White light-one color containing myriad others- I understand.

Water-one substance with many forms-I can feel.

G.o.d-one yet infinite in form-I can't understand.

"When I dance," Govinda says, "or when I'm in a beautiful place, I feel I'm in the presence of something large and good.

It doesn't give me answers. But I don't need them.

For me that feeling of wonder, of awe, of mystery, of being in touch with something larger, is as close as G.o.d comes."

Wonder. Mystery. Awe.

In touch with something large and good.

The way I felt as a child in the temple of the dancing Shiva, exploring every crevice of His sculpted feet with my fingertips.

I had no questions then. Only a yearning to learn dance.

I have questions now. But perhaps I don't need answers.

Like Gautami, who, in the end, didn't need an explanation for her son's death, because she found experiencing Buddha's compa.s.sion was enough.

Perhaps even G.o.d doesn't know why some suffer more, some less.

Paati seemed sure what G.o.d meant to her.

Maybe, like Govinda, I don't need to be sure.

Maybe all I need is to feel what I felt as a child. Through dance.

By dancing a different way, dancing so it strengthens not just my body, but also helps me find, then soothe, and strengthen, my soul.

CLOSE.

Govinda and I arrive at a pond filled with dark pink lotuses.

"This is my temple," Govinda says.

He sits next to me on the gra.s.sy bank.

There's a s.p.a.ce between us, a sliver of air.

He held my waist the day of the party.

Now, with no one else nearby, with no excuse to touch me, he's careful and correct.

I love that he's such a gentleman.

I hate that he's such a gentleman.

While we sit together, sharing silence, my impatience slowly falls away.

Music enters my mind, notes as sweet as I always heard as a child.

A frog hops onto the gra.s.s, tha thing gina thom.