"Black beauty, seven beauty."

A somewhat impromptu temple ritual

Last night was hilarious. All nights have been great, but yesterday was particularly amazing.

Fanny and I took a walk to town because we wanted some bottles of water. New batteries for my camera would be nice too. We got these things, though the batteries turned out to be bunk which I found out at an inconvenient time. We did get a bunch of other stuff, like scrunchies and unintentionally funny notebooks. I will be giving some away. They are great.

Though it was getting late in the afternoon, we decided to check out the local temple. It was a very nice walk, but it started to get dark fast. The thing about this area, and probably many others in Kerala and in India, is that when it gets dark, it gets pitch BLACK. There are no street lights around here - maybe a couple. A flashlight at night is a necessity.

We get to the temple. It is outside. That is to say, there are two erect walls on the north and west sides, and the rest is held up by slender metal poles. From the ceiling (which is a tin roof), there are pipes, and from these pipes hang strung marigold flowers. They grow in abundance here, in bushes - orange, pink, and yellow varieties. The centerpiece was a mini-temple housing a gold-cast Shiva surrounded by a bunch of other business. Well, like, snakes, and tiger faces and stuff, with long tongues, and two other figures. There were many lit candles - no, they weren't candles proper, but lit pieces of fabric. Yes. They douse slim pieces of fabric in an oil, and light them on fire, as seen in the photo above.



We asked the priest if we could come in. He was the only one there. He looked young. He wore only a white cloth from the waist down to his knees. I guessed he was around my age. He said, "yes, come," so we took off our shoes and proceeded toward the center.

I followed Fanny's lead. She sat on her knees so I sat on my bum a couple meters away. Then she got up to look around so a minute later I did the same. It was getting really dark at this point, and we'd have to walk all the way home. "Did you want to go?" she whispered. "Well," I said, "it's not going to get any darker." So we stayed. Then, a truck pulls into the lot outside the temple. Out comes the second priest, the same one who did a ceremony a couple days ago at someone's in-house temple across the street: four men were embarking on a pilgrimage to an ancient temple far away, so they were conducting a service to the local deity, Ayappa (third son of Shiva, god of destruction) to bless their journey. He was happy to see us, I think.

He began the ceremony for Shiva - this was Shiva's temple after all - and after some pleasantries, he crawled into the mini-temple housing the deity cast in gold, and closed the door. When he sat in there, we could see through a crack only see his arm ornamentally flailing about - his hand movements were graceful and beautiful. He poked his head out.

"Om nama Shivaya - do you know?" Fanny and I looked at each other. Yes, we knew. "Please stand, in prayer." He said, "close your eyes. Om nama Shivaya sing, stop when he" - he points at the other priest standing in front of us with a rope in his hand attached to a bell on the ceiling - "makes the sound." The instructions sounded pretty straight forward. "OK. Close your eyes." He closed the doors to his little temple and we began chanting.

From inside he chanted something fast and different from what we said outside. With the bell-bearer chanting, and our slightly self-assured attempts to follow him, our voices reached a fever pitch and the rope was pulled over and over again and the sound rang through my ears and the door of the mini-temple burst open and in his hand was a gold receptacle of fire, moving gently through the air, filling all the space between Shiva and himself, in the air and to the ceiling, everywhere. The other priest took the fire and brought it to us. We put our hands close and brought the smoke to our faces and heads. The priest inside sprinkled water on himself, his other, and on us. Then, we did it again, with a different chant - om namo narayanaya.

As we shut our eyes, he closed the doors. When he opened the doors, we opened our eyes. Fire, then water.

Time for sacred face and body painting. The four of us surround a small table with 3 metal bowls. One contains a fragrant grey ash, another, red powder, and the other is mustard yellow goo. The younger priest points to the grey ash, then to his forehead. So, I dunk my finger in and press the space between my eyes. Same with the red and yellow. Then the other priest, fresh out of the mini-temple oven, puts a dab of grey powder in the palm of our left hands. Water is sprinkled on top. He rubs his hands together, and we do the same. With the grey mud in our hands, we begin another ritual.

With the right ring finger, draw a triangle in the center of the left palm. Inside this triangle. draw the symbol of om. Not lifting this finger, say "om nama Shivaya" eight times. Then the triumvakum mantra three times. Tucking in the right pinky, take three fingers into the mud and streak across forehead, then shoulders, feet - on the "joints," the older priest said, a total of 14 places. "Muscles," the younger one added, flexing his arms and posing like a big strong man. I broke out in laughter. Thus we began the silly portion of this night ritual.

The younger priest led us around the mini-temple. Being so wrapped up in the wonder of the experience I failed to see a step and totally tripped my balls off. He laughed to himself. Whenever we had to move about this step, he always reminded me of its existence. Ha, ha, ha. VERY FUNNY. I see it, OKAY. Anyway. At each side of the mini-temple we put our hands together to pray, then as it sufficed, we moved to the next side. Oh, we also had to leave at one point, for five minutes, about five meters away. I forgot about that.

Earlier that day during morning yoga class, Nitya rolled over and said, "Say 'endande'." "Endande," I said. He wanted me to say it to his nephew Kanan, when he came home from school. What does it mean? "What is it?" or, better translates, "What is this?" He wanted me to say it surprised, but I vouched for angry.

At the temple I decided to try out my new word. "Endande!" I said, kind of like Eureka! because I was having trouble remembering the actual word. They gasped and laughed for a long time. They were so surprised! To be honest, I had no idea what I was saying, but I thought they'd appreciate some Malayalam. Looks like they did! (Nitya later told me that 'endande' is a reprimand directed toward a boy - the priest even asked him later if I thought he was doing something wrong!)

We sat and ate prasad, which is a food offering to a deity (here, Shiva) that is then blessed, and eaten by the temple-goers at the end of the ceremony. The younger priest made the meal. It was so delicious! He was very proud of himself. We ate from banana tree leaves which can just be tossed away after we've finished. Who needs real dishes when you can eat from LEAVES! Yeah! Our first course was popped rice and hard chunks of sweet stuff, like sugar or something. Who cares what it was, it tasted like heaven! The second course was a sweet rice porridge, also mind-blowingly tasty. With our meal we got flowers, which we put into our hair. That's what you're supposed to do, it's not only pretty but an ancient practice. So awesome.

So the four of us sat and "talked." Most of my communication consisted of faces and failed attempts at Malayalam. Many laughs were had.

It can be hard to gauge a person's age in another culture. Fanny had guessed earlier the older priest to be 24. I didn't even try. So, they wanted to know how old we were. Fanny said hers (I'll spare disclosing the number just in case) and I said 20. The younger one put his hand over his mouth. He was surprised. How old were they? The older one was in fact 24 - a perfect guess on Fanny's part. The other? 18. No wonder he was so cheeky.

It was such a fun night, there at the temple. When it was time to go, the younger - okay, they had names but I forgot them - packed the rest of the delicious parsad into little bags for us to take home. Holy deliciousness for the road, yay!

The older priest took us home in his big truck. He talked on the phone to his cousin in Engineering the whole time, even passing the phone to Fanny to talk to her. So funny.

We got in pretty late considering we were only supposed to be taking a walk to town for bottled water and batteries. Nitya said he was ready to put some real clothes on and go for a search. Everything worked out pretty well.

Such a good night!

PS: It was the older priest who said "black beauty, seven beauty," as a way of saying their skin colour is beautiful and wonderful, like the seven wonders of the world.