CODA my grandmother just says how the muslins of today seem so coarse and that only in autumn should one wake up at dawn to pray, can one feel that same texture again. One morning, she says, the air was dew-starched: she pulled it absently through her ring. —“The Dacca Gauzes,” from The Half-Inch Himalayas, by Agha Shahid Ali (1987)
He reached the head a few minutes before the precise hour for the eye ceremony. His nephew was there, waiting for him. Ananda had climbed this ladder a day earlier and so knew he would be most comfortable and efficient two rungs from the top. He used a sash to tie himself to the ladder and then his nephew passed him the chisels and brushes. Below them the drumming stopped. The boy held up the metal mirror so that it reflected the blank stare of the statue. The eyes unformed, unable to see. And until he had eyes—always the last thing painted or sculpted—he was not the Buddha. . . . The noise of his hammering stopped and there was just the wind around them, its tugs and gusts and whistles. He handed the tools to his nephew. Then he drew from a satchel the colours for the eye. He looked past the vertical line of cheek into the landscape. Pale greens, dark greens, bird movement and their nearby sounds. It was the figure of the world the statue would see forever, in rainlight and sunlight, a combustible world of weather even without the human element. —From Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje (2000)
Harvard South Asia Institute 93