In Guwahati this week, on the slope of Nilachal Hill where the Brahmaputra widens past the city, the doors of the Kamakhya temple are closed. The goddess is believed to be in her annual menstruation, and for three days the temple, like the goddess, is at rest. An observational essay on the Ambubachi Mela and what India's most theologically radical festival both reveals and complicates about the female body, the earth, and the divine feminine.

Yes, the rivers have been dammed, diverted, polluted, paved over, drained for cities. Yes, the rivers an Indian grandmother knew are not the rivers her great-grandchildren will know. But Indian civilisation has also built its greatest cities along these waters, written its oldest poems beside them, sung its most enduring songs in their honour.

Before steel. Before non-stick. The kitchen was a karigari. The brass thali of Moradabad, the kansa cup of Mannar, the terracotta matka from a village fair, the iron tawa darkening with use and the karigars whose work has always sat on our table, and whose names we never asked.