Aarav slammed his school bag down by the door. "It's not fair," he said. "Dadu, you keep telling me to think about God, to keep a kind thought going. But I have homework, and cricket practice, and I have to help Ma carry the fish baskets, and feed the cat, and — when am I supposed to do all the remembering? There's no time left over."

Dadu was mending a net, his fingers moving without him even looking at them. He smiled. "Sit," he said. "Watch my hands."

Aarav watched. The old fisherman's fingers tied knot after knot, quick and sure, looping the twine, pulling it tight, moving to the next gap in the net. They never stopped.

"Now," said Dadu, still tying, "what am I looking at?"

"At me," said Aarav.

"And what are my hands doing?"

"Fixing the net."

"Both at once," said Dadu. "My eyes are on you, my hands are on the work. I am talking to you, and the net is still being mended. Did I have to stop the net to look at you?"

"No," Aarav admitted.

Dadu set the net down. "You think remembering God is like cricket practice — a separate thing you must find an extra hour for. It is not. It is more like the way my eyes stayed on you while my hands worked. Underneath everything you do, a quiet thought can keep running, the way a song hums in your head while you walk. You can carry the fish baskets AND keep that thought. You can do your homework AND keep it. The work happens with your hands. The remembering happens underneath."

He picked the net back up. "Krishna told Arjuna exactly this on the battlefield. He did not say, 'Stop fighting and go sit in a cave.' He said, 'Fight — and remember Me at the same time. Let your mind and your thinking rest on Me while your hands do their duty.' Both hands busy. One heart still."

Aarav was quiet. Then he picked up a corner of the net and began, clumsily, to copy the knots. His fingers fumbled. But somewhere underneath the fumbling, very quietly, a small steady thought had started to hum.