Church on Sunday... Or Something

I had my first trip to a Hindu temple on Sunday night.  Sanju, a good Hindu, needed some luck, and I decided to join.

It was a Sunday night at about 7:30, but that didn’t mean things were dying down.  If anything, Bangalore gets more crowded on Sunday nights for some reason.  All of the stores were still open and busy–chains, expensive jewelry stores, restaurants, kebab stands, everything.  So, needless to say, the small temple was also somewhat busy.

We left our sandals at the gate (duh!) and headed in.  There were three stalls, for lack of a better word, with large statues in each.  The first one we went to I recognized as Hanuman, the monkey god (I’m getting good at this).  Some priest or something was doing some ritual (or something), and by following Sanju’s lead, I placed my hands over some candle then rubbed the heat on my head, put my hands in the right prayer position, accepted a small flower, then got this dot put on my brow.  I declined the mysterious drop of drink that he was passing out, but Sanju said it was just coconut milk.  We repeated this at the Ganesh (elephant head, human body god), stall then she walked into a stall with some other statute in it.  She later explained that this was “nine gods,” and she walked around it nine times.

I noticed a sort of menu at this place, where for various amounts of money you could have certain blessings performed.  The cheapest stuff was about 50-60 cents (Rs.25), while some sort of butter sacrifice was going for about 11-12 bucks (Rs.500).  When I need to call in some serious favors, I’ll remember that gods like butter.

As we left, we found some dude (bum, transient, whatever... I don’t know how to classify all Indian weirdos) hunched over on the barrier between the temple and the sidewalk, over a bunch of sandals.  He was spitting, and he’d hocked some huge ones on Sanju’s sandals.  She walked back to the car barefoot.  Good times.