How do I explain a god with an elephant head to my foreign friends?
On the impossible task of translating a civilisation in real time
We were inside Hawa Mahal in Jaipur, in a small gallery towards the end where a row of artefacts sits behind a thinning rope, when my friend finally stopped in front of a large brass Ganesha and said, “Okay, at some point, I want to know his story. Why the elephant head and the human body?”
I had been…
