The feminine principle in the Sikh vision of the Transcendent is the outcome of many years of reverie and research, and I could never succeed in acknowledging everyone for their input into it. From my grandmother, who gave me an image of what a Sikh woman could be, to my current students at Colby College, who make me recast and recreate my ideas with their provocative queries and comments, there are many, many conscious and unconscious contributors to whom I owe my thanks.

I spent several years of my childhood with my grandmother and was nurtured on her stories about life. Lying next to her on the terrace of our ancestral home under the starry skies I would keep asking Bībījī (for this is how we referred to my grandmother) to narrate to me incidents of my favorite protagonist, her maternal aunt – the strong and courageous woman who was afraid of nothing, not even of snakes. This tall and beautiful woman with big dark eyes as big as a triangle (Bībījī would join her two thumbs to make the base of a triangle formed by her index fingers) governed her own farm, and with her intelligence and kindness won the affection of all, including that of robbers and cobras. Each night I would stay up late hearing from my dainty grandmother's lips the daring episodes of her maternal aunt. With my mother, of course, it was different: she would read to me stories of Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood, and I enjoyed them immensely.