Sanjhi at dusk

Collectors are trained to fear loss. Sanjhi is made for it. The stencil may survive in a drawer; the rangoli is worshipped and gone by morning. That is not a failure of the craft. It is the craft.

What, then, does one collect? The cutter’s hand, the paper, a photograph of an evening, a relationship with a temple that still commissions the work. Stewardship of an ephemeral form is a discipline of attention, not of accumulation.