Buki also rescued the other two, sisters from Karnataka in the south, whose mother had unloaded each in turn at the age of five by dedicating them to the goddess Yellamma. In this way, they became temple girls or devadasis. They still wore their devadasi necklaces of red and white beads on a saffron-colored string when I met them. The older girl, Devamayi, was thirteen. She had already undergone her puberty ceremony consummating her marriage with Yellamma, following which her virginity was put up for auction to prospective patrons. From the aspect of the House of Holy Healing, therefore, she did not strictly fall into the prepubescent category. Nevertheless, a decision was made to let her stay in the pod in the spirit of family togetherness along with her eight-year-old sibling, Mahamaya. Shmelke felt very close to the sisters, he confided to me, a deep inner personal connection, he said, and not only to these two but to the whole universe of devadasis in general. When the story of my life ended three years later and I departed the shell of the House of Holy Healing, there were eighteen girls in the pod, all of them devadasis.

Rescuing devadasis became a major element integrally tied into Rebbie-ji’s overall master plan at the House of Holy Healing. He regarded himself to be a male incarnation of a devadasi. Ich bin ein devadasi, he would introduce himself to jubilant ovations. Of course, I understood. He too had been sold to the temple, like his namesake, the prophet Samuel, who had been offered by his barren mother, Hannah, to the Lord in a deal in exchange for a child, delivered as promised to the high priest Eli in the tabernacle at Shiloh after he was weaned as part of a sacrifice package that also included three bullocks, an ephah of meal, and a bottle of wine. “I never had a choice,” Shmelke said to me, in full awareness that I of all people would get it and feel his pain. “I never was allowed to find out what else was out there in the world. You think I was handicapped by an accident as an adult? I was handicapped from before I was even born. What else could I do when I grew up but become a rabbi?”