Everything we make begins here.

It starts as a place.

Clay is ground — heavy, gritty, and carrying whatever the land around it is made of. Dig it from two different fields and you get two different pots.

Water is what makes it move.

Add a little and the clay softens enough to shape. Add too much and it slumps in your hands. Potters judge it by feel, not by measuring.

Then it has to wait.

Air pulls the water back out, slowly, and the shape sets as it goes. In a Pune monsoon the same pot can take days longer. The weather decides, not us.

And then it stops being clay.

Heat changes it for good. Once a pot has been fired, no amount of water will ever soften it again, which is why pots outlast almost everything else we make.

And it goes back again.

A pot holds water for a plant. A Seed Ganesha dissolves into soil and grows. Clay comes out of the ground, spends a while as something useful, and returns to it.