I first encountered God at my Christian-run school in Jhansi, a railway town in north India. It was the late 1970s and until then I had known only gods. My mother, a high-caste Hindu, had pictures and statues of many divine men, women and animals—mythical as well as living—in her miniature wooden temple at home. It wasn't clear which of these little gods in their tinselly splendour was in charge. Certainly, my mother did not feel the need to exalt one over the other. However, the Protestant Christians who ran my school insisted on a religious hierarchy, claiming that there was no god but God—their own; and they expended much effort in trying to rescue the mostly Hindu pupils from their idol-worshipping families.