Aniket bowed his head. “I am empty, Mata. The priests say I am unworthy. I cannot hold a single verse.”

Aniket smiled. “I have no words of my own. I am only the reed. The Mata is the scribe.”

“Om Saraswati Ishwari Bhagwati Mata…”

“You are a vessel with a hole at the bottom,” the Head Priest had sneered, throwing Aniket’s latest manuscript into the fire. “No Goddess can fill you.”

Knowledge is not a possession. It is a relationship. And the Mother of Speech does not abandon those who speak to her from the empty, honest heart.

“You called, child,” she said, her voice the sound of ink flowing across a page.