At souvenir stalls in India, artists accost you, offering to write your name on a grain of rice. They point to examples of their minuscule artistry that are laid out, proffering amagnifying glass to help you see the hymn or poem etched on the seed. As a child, I was intrigued by the claim that epic verses might be written on these grains until a smug adolescent skepticism took over and killed the magic. Who could check, I concluded, to know if this was true? Years later, at an exhibition of Mughal miniature paintings at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, equipped with the magnifying glass on offer, I was stopped short by the folds of the churidar pants worn by a minor courtier in the corner of the frame, each individual bangle-like contour drawn by the artist as if just for this moment of illumination.