I grew up thinking God lived at the top of a palmyra tree.

Not literally — I knew better, even as a child. But there was something about the way those trees stood along the riverbank near our village in Tamil Nadu that made you feel small in the right way. Straight and unbending, they climbed out of the black cotton soil and kept going until the crowns disappeared into the heat haze. You could not take one in with a single glance. You had to start at the roots and travel all the way up. And somewhere in that upward journey, something in your chest would quietly shift.

I was maybe eight the first time I really paid attention.

My grandmother woke me before the river mist had lifted and walked me down to the palmyra grove at the edge of the riverbed without explaining why. She stood at the base of the youngest tree, looked up, then reached for the tender frond at the center — the newest one, still soft and folded, not yet open to the world — and drew it down with both hands.

She turned and pressed it into mine.

It was lighter than I expected, still cool with the morning. She looked at me the way she did when she meant something completely.

“Kanna,” she said, her Tamil low and unhurried. “It grew where we could not reach. Now it is here, in your hands. Hold it and think about why.”

I did not understand her. I was eight. But her words stayed the way the river stays in the land long after the flood has........

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