Vulture by Katie Fallon

Author:Katie Fallon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of New England

▼ As I approached the hill’s summit, I reached another landing. A skinny, tan dog with pointed ears and a sharp muzzle lounged across the top stair, in the shade provided by another concrete roof supported by white pillars. The dog watched me approach, calmly sniffing the air before resting his chin on his paws. In the center of the landing, a wrinkled woman in a turquoise sari sat behind a laid-out blanket on which she displayed small green bananas and bottles of water for sale. Two more tan dogs sprawled in the dusty shade nearby; one’s face and flank were crisscrossed with gray scars. He slept deeply, eyes squeezed shut, front paw occasionally twitching. What do dogs in India dream about? Cattle carcasses and not a vulture in sight?

I turned the corner and continued up the last set of stairs, which ended at the open door of Vedagiriswarar Temple. Just past the threshold, a gaunt elderly man sat on a folding chair, collecting the five-rupee (about eight cents, US) admission fee. My eyes adjusted to the low light as I stepped past him into the temple’s cool, stony darkness. Diya candles flickered on trays before deities, and plumes of incense curled toward the high ceiling. Two murtis flanked a short, brass-colored staircase that led to Shiva’s inner sanctuary.

I sat cross-legged in front of another black Ganesh idol; the cool marble floor soothed my aching leg muscles after the long climb up the stone stairs. Worshippers of all ages trickled in and out of the temple and the inner sanctuary: young men in jeans and polo shirts, grizzled women with gray hair dressed in ragged saris, girls with long black braids clutching infants, bald Gandhi lookalikes wearing ankle-length dhotis and carrying walking sticks. Most entered the temple, blinked against the darkness, and made their way to one of the idols. They paused before Ganesh, touched their palms together, and murmured prayers before climbing the brass stairs. I peered past them into the small sanctuary. A priest, wearing only a short white dhoti, attended to the handful of worshippers. The priest’s forehead was covered in a wide swath of white. Some worshippers sat on the floor of the sanctuary, and some stood along its walls. Several repeated the mantra Om namah shivaya, “I bow to Shiva,” in unison.

I longed to rise and enter the sanctuary, but out of respect for a religion that wasn’t my own, I didn’t. Instead, I bid farewell to Ganesh, stood, and continued through the temple. I passed a man sitting cross-legged in a tan dhoti, a newspaper spread on the marble floor before him. He glanced at me briefly and resumed reading, resting his chin in his palm. I followed the narrow hallway as it wound out of the temple, onto a concrete platform that looked out over all of Thirukalukundram and the surrounding pastures, rice paddies, and hills. I could see another well-known local site, Sangu Theertham, a 1,000-square-yard tank filled with water with a temple in its center.

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