The Temple

Overnight Rain. Mud. Temple. Outside. Corner. Amir. Standing.

Question: Why is Amir standing in front of the temple?
Options:

A) Amir loves standing in the mud.

B) Amir regards this as the garden spot of the city. He is just drinking in the view.

C) Amir is a sleepwalker. He doesn’t know. He is just sleeping. He is just walking.

D) Amir is bored.

Correct Answer: D

Amir is bored. Why? Because there is nothing to do. Nothing to do! He is waiting for the aarti to begin. And finish. There is quite some time left before it did, and his parents, intensely devout that they are, are determined not to leave the temple without having witnessed it.

So, escaping the repeated insistence of his father to sit with them inside, he came out for a walk.

Question: Then why is he standing?
Answer: He soon found that the stroll wasn’t quite a good idea – the monsoons were on, the road was muddy, with puddles aplenty. So finally, without any options left to consider, he decided to stand at a corner and look.

But look at what?

Question: Describe the scene in front of Amir.
Answer: The place outside the temple is crowded. It is evening; time for the aarti, and therefore people are flocking in, smelling of their undiminishing, unshakeable faith in religion. There is the smell of incense too, coming from the shops on his right and left, selling just about everything you might associate with worship – coconuts (for prasad), cloth (for the Gods to wear), specially perfumed agarbattis to simply take away, etc etc etc.

And yes, they are also selling what might be called religious memorabilia – small artefacts, paintings of Krishna and Radha, even watches with Krishna playing his beloved flute on the dial - which devoted followers can buy to remind themselves of their devotion, and foreigners can take away to show off to their folk back home.

“Hey Barney, what do you have there?!”

“Oh I got that from Indyeah. It’s a Krishnay-Radder painting, one of the Hindu gods, quite a character. And that’s his wife… no no… mistress… na… girlfriend… well, something of that sort.”

“Fuckin’ Beautiful Man!”

“Yeah. Exotic! Heh heh.”

There are many foreigners to be seen here, not in the clothes Amir would associate with them, but in saffron, with brown beads worn in a mala, dressed just like sadhus, the sort he’d seen in the movie Hare Rama Hare Krishna – long blonde hair, one chilam in the mouth, one in hand, doped to the bone, singing bhajans as if they really meant it.

Harry-Om-Harry! Harry-Om-Harry!

Face white white. Clothes saffron. So that if you gave them a green turban, they would look like the tiranga ulta. The tri-colour inverted. Ha ha!

There are some which are in their usual attire – tourists – looking like something out of a Woodland advertisement. Bottle green jackets, khakis, brown mountaineer shoes. There are a couple standing in front of the shops, enraptured by the sight of an infant eating bread crumbs, picking them up from the ground itself.

“Rick, look at that!”

“Yeah…got it”, says Rick, clicking on his state-of-the-art camera (Canon EOS1. 10 megapixels. 10X Zoom. Wow.), with a triumphant look on his face, glad to have his Indyeah! - and her blood-sister Poverty - on film.

The crowds slowly thicken. Twenty minutes pass. Amir can hear the bells ringing from the temple. The aarti has begun. He heads back.

Question: How does Amir feel?
Options:

A) Amir is relieved. The wait is over.

B) Amir is angry with himself; he missed the start of the aarti!

C) Amir is sad. It was fascinating looking at the crowd around him.

D) We can’t say. We don’t know. Amir is a sleepwalker.