I took a step back. "Why, you just said--"

"I said that sometimes my heart will not listen to the logic of my mind. I would never silence it. To do so would risk the beauty and metaphor that bring power to our lives."

I snorted. "Not the words of a true scientist, Chandra. If I can't quantify it or qualify it experimentally, if my senses can't perceive it, then it doesn't exist."

Chandra shook his head. "Perhaps to you such things do not exist. You're dealing with a people to whom demons are very real. Does this mean there are dimensions to their realities that do not exist in yours? I think you believe in the intangible more than you think."

"Hah!" I said. "Prove it!"

Chandra reached over and gently took the crumpled piece of fax paper from me. "If this fluid was merely plasma and hemoglobin to you, my friend, you would not have continued for the past five minutes to scrub all traces of it from your hands."

I looked at my hands, almost chapped from the rubbing I'd given them. I know I blushed. When I finally spoke, my voice was hoarse and timid. "It's not the same thing..."

Chandra smiled and shrugged "Blood is a symbol, as well as a subject for study. As is your elephant. I do not think you have ever quite grasped just how powerful a symbol your reanimated elephant can be. The Black Mother, containing both death and new life. A profound metaphor..."

There was that mother goddess thing again. "What is it about this Kali, Chandra? Are you supposed to fear Kali? Love her? What?"

"Here." He pushed me to his workstation and made me sit. In a moment he'd logged onto the Net and called up a database on Eastern religions. While he went to wash his face, I scrolled through screens of incantations, legends and doctrine written in Sanskrit centuries ago. When he came back, Chandra pointed out a few beliefs in the discipline of yoga. Among other things, a yogi gained the ability to overcome the eight great obstacles of the world, the eighth being the power of bewitching and subduing by magical means.

"Fascinating stuff, but my project's still in jeopardy." I said.

Chandra smiled and scrolled through a few screens. "Here. Here it says, 'to make ghosts, female goblins and other demons of the netherworld become his slave, a yogi must meditate at midnight in a cemetery, burning ground or place where criminals are executed while seated on a corpse.'" He stopped and looked at me significantly.

"Seated on a corpse...?" I groaned. " This is crazy! We're worse than superstitious if we do this."

Chandra spoke coaxingly. "With the right words, a little subtle guidance by me, we may further convince the mahouts that whoever commands an animal able to grant power over demons also commands the greater part of the Netherworld. Their own fears will make this attractive to them."

"Chandra--"

"Think of it as a synthesis," he said. "Creating acceptance of your beast by using the metaphor of religion."

He finally sold me. As I got ready to leave, he tore some hard copy from the printer, one of the graphics from the Net's database. It was a portly dancing form with eight arms and an elephant head.

"Ganesh?" I said. "Why do you want me to have this?"

"Pray to him," Chandra suggested. "Ganesh, son of Shiva and of Kali, is also called the Lord of Obstacles. His aid is to be requested on any new endeavor."

"Hey there, big fella," I said to the paper.

So that is how I come to be here, sitting atop Shana-Kali this balmy night, feeling more than a little foolish, with a tilaka painted on my own forehead. The coarse hairs of the elephant prick me through my khakis. I use no howdah tonight, more for effect than anything else.

The area they call the ghat at Chatwain is little more than an arrangement of paving stones and low ledges in whose cracks remain the powdery ash from past cremations. In the distance, I can see the firefly lights of electric torches. The mahouts and trainers have come to watch this, I know, their superstitions fanned even hotter by the murmurinqs of Dr. Chandra.

I call out in a resounding voice, "By this mastery over the darkness and over Shana-Kali, comes mastery of many things. Hear me now as I claim power from the gods themselves." I unobtrusively click the recorder at my belt on and the tiny remote in my ear comes to life.

Only I can hear the Hindi phrases spoken in Chandra's elegant voice. There is a pause after every group of syllables so that I can repeat them, still in the same stentorian tones. I read the translations of the Rig Veda and other sources earlier so that the meaning of some of what I am saying remains with me.

Who will be the first to volunteer for Shana-Kali, I wonder? I had seen the mahouts looking at the elephant with new eyes the past two days. To a superstitious man, power over demons is a very attractive thing. I begin to feel optimistic. Surely once one of the mahouts work with Shana-Kali, they will all demand their turn. Somehow, I suspect it will be Gyan who first comes forward. Now I see the torches are brighter. I catch a glimpse of excited faces.

Something shifts. I feel it--like a chemical reaction. I can feel old bonds being torn within me. That part of me that that had such aversion to, such fascination with superstitious talk, that part of me I denied, seems freer somehow. Power and metaphor, I think.

In the drama of the moment, those old words from the Bhagavad-Gita take on new meaning. My work has caused me to focus too much on the ephemeral body. I believe in an eternal soul, I realize, as strongly as I believe any law of physics. I close my eyes and seem to smell a hint of Italian Rose perfume. I feel a touch on my cheek, my mother's touch of farewell, and once again her hands are warm.