The fountains flash like shooting stars. Water glides and spills over steps or lies calm in lotus covered pools. As it grows darker the coloured lights begin to flicker through the jetting sprays, green, violet, crimson, gold. A stream of people surges over the bridge. The coloured lights touch their faces so that they appear to be mirages that lie beyond the green grass lawns. Dewa watches from afar and sits talking to one of the party who has been on a scholarship to Germany. Watching the people eating at the stalls from the piles of food, he is reminded of the canteen at his workplace in Aurangabad. The young men, he says, order different dishes, everything that is on the menu, then grumble about the food and leave the dishes virtually untouched, wasting all the food.

‘Why?’ Dewa asks.

‘They don’t have to pay for it. It is all subsidized. These young men take the attitude that it is their right.’ The food stalls here are piled with vadai, samosas, pakoras, kadalai, murukku, idli, and the people stand around drinking tea and kaapi and fruit juice. The nun and Dewa drink fresh grape juice and eat kadalai.

It is time to go back to Bangalore. The students ignore the guide’s warning and wait until they have had their fill of the coloured lights of Brindavan. Dewa and the nun settle down to wait patiently until every student has returned.

On the bus journey back, the videos appear on the screen again to keep the students quiet.

Dewa is the last passenger to get off the bus when they reach Bangalore. It is late. There are no women in the street at this hour. She hurries back to the hotel as quickly as possible. It is only the Indian male who is out this late. The streets are silent.

In Madurai a Brahmin with a poonool across his shoulders leads them through the crowds at the Meenakshi Amman Temple. Crowds of devotees within the inner buildings wait in long queues to offer poojas in the sanctum. Bands of pilgrims walk together, wearing black veshtis with orange shawls on their shoulders, their torsos lithe and wiry. They are followers of Ayanar and they go from temple to temple, walking with a peculiar swagger of their hips. Wild black hair tumbles about their foreheads, prayer beads click round their necks. They walk barefooted, treading the pathways of their pilgrimage.