New Delhi, Oct. 3 -- When I was ten, my best friend and classmate was Mohit Jain Dhoomimal. We were boys together at Modern School, Vasant Vihar, in Delhi. Today Mohit is the third-generation proprietor of Dhoomimal Art Centre in Connaught Place, the first art gallery in India. But my first encounter with Jain tradition came through the boy beside me in class, and a phrase that seemed to hold an entire philosophy in a few soft syllables. Jainism was not only a faith one practised in a temple or a discipline visible in what one ate. Once each year, it asked a person to turn towards another and seek forgiveness.

The phrase was Michhami Dukkadam. I did not then know its layers, its place in the Jain calendar, or the long work of self-examin...