As they continue to walk, the pathway narrows, hedged in by cobra-hooded leaves which sway from side to side. At last they reach the village of the exorcists. It is the aftermath of the bali ceremony. They step into the compound where the great effigy of the yakka, moulded out of clay, lies on the ground, as if felled by some cataclysmic supernatural force. To Janine the demon is gigantic, mythic, tall as the arecanut palm. The huge protuberant black eyes seem to devour the sunlight. From what ancient memory have these faces emerged? From what time and age, until the form, shape and aspect assumed the terror and fear of man’s imaginings …? For the yakkas, the demons, were here long before man had set up his habitations by rivers and streams and waterfalls and forests. These spirits dwell in darkness and desolation, you encounter them in graveyards and in lonely places. They bring sickness upon you and insanity. The yakkas have no relation to human faces around you. The lolling tongues, the tusked teeth, the bulging eyes—they are the reflection of the dreadful, awe-inspiring fear and terror within man’s mind.

Measured against the length of her shadow, to Janine the bali images appear to be colossal. They are the cause of all maladies that assail man and release lies in their propitiation and exorcism; for the pent-up trammelled feelings to be freed from the prison of your self.

To exorcise the demons of sickness and evil within, writhing in you as you lie wrapped up in a white cloth, stretched out on a mat, with your blind dark stare, your mind twining with snakes, the kattadiya chants his incantations and you are rid of your burning fever and delirium. Red, yellow, blue, white and black colours from the barks of trees, from seeds crushed to yield juices, have been used to paint the folds of the cloth and the flesh of the body. The black bulging eyes leap out of the white protuberant orbs, fearful and hypnotic, opaque with mattdarkness.

Flowers, yellow, white and red, marigolds, araliya, hibiscus, lie scattered, fallen from the pideni tatuvas woven out of leaves containing the offerings to the demons. Janine stoops to pick up the bright flowers strewn about.

‘Do not touch bebi, do not touch,’ Mungo gently cautions. ‘Never pick up the flowers that fall after the thovil. The demon that has caused the illness has been cast out. All the evil powers that had affected my daughter, all the vas that has been exorcised, lies in those offerings.’

‘What will happen to me?’ Janine asks Mungo, her hand half stretched out to pick the flowers.

‘You will become afflicted with sickness. You will get sores on your hands. Then there must be a bali for you too. So let them lie where they are.’

The flowers are left then to wither in the sun and to lose their brightness.