Saraswati and the Question

Meera asked questions. Why is the sky farther away in winter? Where does a river keep its water when it is not raining? If I am asleep, how do I know I was asleep? She asked them the way other children breathed.

Her teacher grew tired. The other children laughed. "Nobody knows those things, Meera," they said, "and nobody needs to." So Meera stopped asking out loud, and the questions stayed inside her and got louder.

One morning before the village woke, she walked to the lake to sit with her loud, quiet head. Mist lay on the water. And on the water, on a white lotus, sat a woman in a white sari with a veena across her lap — and she was already looking at Meera as if she had been waiting.

"You have a question," said Saraswati. Meera nodded and asked the biggest one she had. And Saraswati said, "I don't know." Meera stared. "But you are the goddess of learning." "Yes," said Saraswati. "That is how I know how much there is left."

She nodded at the swan beside her, dipping its beak into the lake. "It takes one sip at a time," she said. "It never once complained that the lake was too big. A question you cannot answer is not a wall, Meera. It is the shape of the next thing you get to learn."

When Meera looked up, the mist was only mist. She walked home along the path with the sun coming up behind her, still holding the question she could not answer — and for the first time in a long while, it did not feel heavy. It felt like a door.