They entered another busy temple thronged by devotees with plates of sweets and offerings in their hands to give to the deity inside, while they ignored the hungry destitute beggars waiting outside for some grace and food. On their way out Rajjo pointed at the poverty-stricken figures begging for alms. ‘Not many of them get much, because the Gods sitting inside draped in silken robes eat up all the offerings. I think instead of waiting outside they should ask the gods sitting inside if I can take your robes, your laddoos and your jewellery?’ Rajjo muttered as she handed a coin to a man huddled in a dirty old blanket. The dark old man with peppered curls and unkempt hair guffawed. He kept the penny Rajjo offered and laughed with his head thrown back. He mocked her pitifully. Rajjo, confused and awkward, scuttled away, unable to bear the laughter of a beggar man on the dusty side road.

Rajjo and Raahat covered over twenty temples, big or small, with a fairly good success rate. They came to the last one. Raahat was delighted that the two days were coming to an end.

After a wait of a good two hours, the head priest of this very revered Shani mandir had agreed to meet them. Rajjo and Raahat sat on the littered marble floor. A barricade of steel demarcated the patrons and devotees standing in a line to visit the deities like they were queuing up to catch a bus. A priest wearing saffron robes sat next to the deity like a watchman, accepting the offerings and tapping the patrons after stamping their forehead with a mark. It was a never-ending procedure he repeated as the serpentine queue grew. The ringing of the bell hanging in front of the deity never stopped. One after the other people rang it loudly to seek divine blessings. The money was put in a box kept in front of the deity. The whole process repeated in Rajjo’s head like a well-rehearsed logarithm.

Just then the much-awaited head priest arrived and took a seat. Rajjo was taken aback to see the small thin wiry man as the head priest. He was bald and had no hair on his face or torso. He wore a saffron lungi and seemed that he was here to suffer Rajjo’s request like he knew he was not going to like it.

Rajjo cleared her throat and gave her a rehearsed proposal, certain that he would bite, but the thin wiry Pandit just stared at her.

‘I won’t because I don’t believe you can…’

‘Can what…’

‘Help people improve their Shani Dasha!’

‘You believe that our lives suffer because the planet Shani is not working well in our astrological charts?’

‘I believe life becomes better with faith…’

Rajjo stared at him, taken aback and then she tried again.

‘It’s all in us. There is no divinity we need’.