I WAS THAT age when I was bathing in the season’s first rains without shame or concern for the holes in my underwear. Together with my first cousins V and S, and S’s friend R, I was enjoying a downpour on the front lawn, sliding and muddying the slippery floors of the verandah, not listening to the half-dozen elders living in my mother’s brother’s small house where we spent every summer vacation.

That evening I saw kachindo the first time. V pointed at it and yelled the word in alarm when he saw me squatting next to a chameleon in the bushes. I turned around and noticed the brown, very still, twig, which suddenly produced two round roving eyes. Kachindo! An ancient-looking meditative reptile. A curious little dinosaur camouflaging in the bush, focused on the newly born winged black ants. Our Gujarati name for chameleon stuck with me. An impressive name for an impressive animal that had the ability to simultaneously be in a place and be invisible. I observed it attentively as it charged on an ant, swallowed it and then disappeared.