She felt old memories clamor like bells, each one chiming against the next: an older temple sister testing her tolerance for pain, dipping her hand in hotter and hotter water, as the elders watched; little Nandi, her temple brother, helping her lay flowers and fruit in a shrine alcove, and filching one juicy segment of fibrous golden mango; pilgrims falling prone before the masked elders, begging for a memento of Ahiranya’s old glory. All things she’d lost. Pieces of herself.
