I would tell her the lessons of this place. To bring water up from a well, you pull the rope hand over hand, as though you and the well are dancing a coy dance of seduction. To chop many red onions fast you need a very sharp cleaver and to slice down the onion half as though you are marking five-degree intervals on a protractor. To feel powerful, touch a thottavaadi, watch it shrivel and collapse at your finger’s brush. To know the limits of power, walk by it again in twenty minutes, when it is revived, standing as tall as if you were never born.
