Holy Men (and Women)

One of our surprise visits after serving in a leprosy colony was to a Hindi temple on a hill. We had driven on this rather main road many times and never seen the temple. It was a warm, humid day and we weren't sure we would enjoy the hike on the dirt road to the top of the hill to see yet another temple. We encouraged each other along and made it to the top of the hill.

Sure enough, at the top of the hill was a temple and sitting in the shade of some trees off to the side on a molded plastic chair was the "holy man" for the temple. Our friend, Bala, helped translate our simple conversation with him. We asked about how many people come to the temple and how often. I think he said about 200 come every night to pray at the temple. He asked if we wanted to see the shrine. We did and so we had to take off our shoes to approach the shrine. It was a lamp-lit dark little room containing a shiny brass figure. The room smelled strongly of incense, kind of sweet and aromatic but still smokey.  Between us taking turns looking in to the shrine he made his way in and prayed for us. He blew two long blasts through a seashell as if it were a trumpet. It reverberated through the little shrine room and was pretty loud. It felt like he was trying to get God's attention. I don't know where God was right at that instance but I'm pretty sure that he heard the holy man's trumpet blasts on that seashell. He then said a short sing-songy prayer for us.

If you look closely in the picture you can see two things: we are holding fruit and we have dots on our foreheads. After praying for us he gave us both things. He gave each of us two pieces of fresh fruit: lemons, limes, or miniature bananas. The fruit was meant to protect us from evil. The marks were made from powders that looked like ashes. One was gray and the other red. First he made a two-inch stripe with the gray and then a red dot in the middle of the gray. The mark, I think, is called "bindi" and represents a 3rd eye that is meant to remind us of spiritual things.

While his manner of praying was different from mine I appreciated his good will in praying for us. I felt good as I considered that he prayed for us and didn't know us at all.

Right when this picture was taken his phone rang and he pulled it out and answered it. It was kind of funny to me.

Elaine is writing another post about our bus trip but I wanted to make the point here that we were in the presence of other holy people on Sunday too. I am referring to those who helped us arrange cabs to and from church without knowing us. They knew we were in need (or incompetent?) and jumped right in and made multiple phone calls to help us out. All I can say is that we would not have made it to our bus on time without these holy men and women and their selfless service.