Our family guru had always told me that I must study; for the others in the family he had pointed a different path. We had grown apart with the years. I was never, after my marriage, ever asked to be part of the festivals. I was alienated from them by my marriage and they were alienated from me by their possessions. Like the gods and goddesses, they hardly ever stepped out of their chariots, those elaborate chapparams which bore them through the world. I sometimes thought they had forgotten—my mother that she had a son, the others that they had a brother.

After I had finished the arichenai and stood talking to the Brahmin priest, I became aware of a woman dressed completely in white who was having a long dialogue with the gods. She stood as if in a trance, rapt, before the statue of Kali with folded hands. She was a stoutish woman, middle-aged, with black hair greying slightly that was oiled and combed smoothly back and knotted into a neat konde at the nape of her neck. She went from god to god, burning camphor in the halved coconut which she held carefully in her hands. She was talking and talking, speaking out her troubles aloud. She didn’t seem to care who heard her. I watched her. There are many like her who come to the temple not only to pray and ask for blessings but also to curse those who have hurt or harmed them. ‘Destroy, destroy,’ they would keep saying, ‘destroy even my own flesh and blood’ … ‘protect me from their evil ways ….’ They pray and curse together. They seek vengeance, a destructive vengeance on their own sons, daughters, in-laws. They have no resources of love or natural affection whereby they can protect themselves. Yogaswamy, our family guru, would always say: ‘If you are truthful and straightforward no evil can touch you.’

The thirtham still tasted sweet on my tongue. The crushed tulsi leaves in the coconut half that I held were fragrant, so was the ripe plantain, its yellow skin already blackening. I rubbed holy ash on my forehead and pressed kumkumum and sandalwood on it. The last time my wife and children had come to the temple—how long ago it now seemed—it was during the family well know to us had beena very special day when a family well known to us had been the patrons. They sat round the cushioned cradle in which lay the god, rocking it to and fro, lulling him to sleep with softly sung thevarams. The god was tired after his journey of several nights in the outside world in which so much good and so much evil both existed. In my village, too, we had the same ceremony—the Pillaiyar god was taken round in the chariot and on the final night, weary after his long journey, he would be lulled to sleep before he went back into the temple sanctum.