I knew that at the end of every dark night there was a radiant morning, and all that, but this was an exceptionally exquisite one last winter in Kanha.

And yet, in a moment, it’d be gone, the rising sun washing away the scene like writings on the beach are purged by the evening tide.

So, turning to Old Hag, who was sitting beside me in a semi-lotus posture with her hair all undone as though she had just finished an hour-long session on a trampoline, I asked, “What’s the secret of everlasting bliss? How to avoid the misery that comes from nostalgia?”

“Spawning,” she said, her thin and chapped lips hardly parting.

“Spawning?” I queried quizzically, like a newbie cook who had just heard that the remedy for tearing up while cutting onions was to chew gum.

“Yes. Dying to the past and being born anew. To every moment. Watching it for what it is sans prejudice, with the wonder and awe it deserves.

“Oh, and dropping the idea of ‘everlasting’ altogether.”

And “on that bombshell”, as Jeremy Clarkson would say, I realised that every morning was amazing, in a different way, and every moment a benediction.

All I had to do was see.