I cross avenues, feeling upside down, as if the earth has just flipped on its axis. My feet move quickly, buoyed by the momentum of the city. The heady scent of incense emanates from a man dressed in a red and yellow caftan. I walk past two women offering salvation in the form of a pamphlet and enter the dank train station. I close my eyes and travel in time.

When I was sixteen, Mom’s work took us to Bangalore, a city of blooming gardens and growing industry. We spent two days there as tourists. The equatorial sun blazed hot on our backs, and our clothes clung to our damp skin. Mom’s fingers stuck to the pages of the guidebook she’d purchased.

We ventured into a cave transformed into a Hindu temple guarded by monolithic pillars and enormous sun discs carved to honor Shiva.

Once a year, the guide had explained, and for no more than one hour, the rays of the sun fall between the horns of the Nandi and illuminate Shiva.

Did they design the temple that way? I asked the guide, a lanky man who seemed unfazed by the sweltering heat. Or did they discover the light fell that way after this had been constructed?

I’m not sure, madam. But I can tell you that it doesn’t matter one bit to the thousands who come each year to witness it.

Mom and I entered, our bare feet touching the cool, wet ground. I followed Mom’s footsteps, and strangers followed mine. We moved deeper into the dimly lit hollow, our backs hunched as the slope of the roof became more severe. I was bent in half, passing statues adorned with strings of marigolds and jasmine, when I felt my pulse quicken, my head grow light.

The guide’s words echoed in my ears.

Sometimes Shiva is depicted with a neck tinged blue from holding in his throat a churning poison gas that threatened to destroy the world. He has powers of destruction, but re-creation as well, as one cannot happen without the other.

I want to get out, I told Mom. The space was so narrow that she could barely turn around to look at my face. Mom made herself into a drill bit, clearing a path for me through the crush of tourists between us and the mouth of the cave.

I fell onto a bench outside the temple. Mom paid someone to slash open a coconut, and she forced a straw to my lips. I drank, wondering if the deities had driven me out of their sacred space. I’ve wandered into houses of worship since then, but never found a home in any of them.

I feel the rumble of the approaching train in my feet before I hear it.