It is sweltering inside the great temple. Sri carries the pooja offerings in his hands—the coconut halves, sacred herbs, bananas, flowers, packets of kumkumum, incense, camphor and holy ash. These are bought for eight rupees at the entrance to the temple or at the place where tickets are bought to keep sandals and shoes safe. The soft pilgrim-trodden stone feels almost buttery underfoot like the ghee that flows from the brimming oil lamps. The press of bodies around them is suffocating. Dewa wants to feel with her whole being that the experience affects her spiritually but she can feel nothing. All she can feel is this sense of admiration for the perfection of the sculpture and architecture that surrounds her; she draws breath at those sculpted forms of gods, the idealized human figures that some anonymous artists have so perfectly realized. Their faces she has seen around her on the streets; the ordinary men and women whom she walks with have the faces of deities. She feels closer to them than to the gods and goddesses. The world is her heaven; here, she prays, makes vows, does penance.

The Brahmin with the poonool leads Sri and Anna away from her into the inner sanctum. The devotees are full of bhakthi and one man is so overcome that he edges himself into the shadows and prays and prays, refusing to move until the priest hits him and chases him away.

One must find God, then, in other places, quieter places, where there are fewer people, Dewa thinks to herself. In that case, perhaps all temples with their inner sanctums exist only within oneself. But many need to be with others when they pray so that bhakthi flows from one to another, a giant ocean that engulfs them.

Dewa is separated, momentarily, from her family. She stands among the heavy pitted outer stone pillars and looks down on the kerney empty of water. Groups of people are being led by their guides, Indians from all parts of the country and a scattering of foreigners. The experience of the West seems so far away. Here she feels at home, an accepted part of the crowds, the colour of her skin does not single her out as an alien. She feels, looking around her, that she can be anything here, part of a pillar, or an ancient sculpture from the past, or even a flower already wilting that lies within the coconut half that is smeared with holy ash and incense. She feels a pang of sadness, a loneliness as she remembers her past in that other country with its seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, and calls out silently the names of friends whom she has left behind as if she would wish the gods to keep them in their memory, perhaps even to protect them.