This is the layer of Hindu practice that no priest touches and that outsiders rarely see, and it is the majority of it. The kolam or rangoli drawn at the threshold before dawn is redrawn daily and is a boundary marker as much as a decoration. Tulsi, the holy basil, stands in a raised pot in the courtyard, is watered and lamped daily, and is married to Krishna in a formal ceremony each autumn. The kitchen operates on rules of purity that predate any doctrine — outdoor clothes off, no tasting from the cooking vessel, food not eaten from a plate someone else has used, and in traditional households restrictions on who may cook, which is where caste and gender enter the house directly. Menstrual seclusion, still practised in many households and enforced strictly in some, belongs to this layer too, and is one of the sharpest live arguments in Hindu families right now — argued out between mothers and daughters rather than in any public forum.