Inside A Hindu Temple
[Adventures in Faith: India; 1991] One Sunday afternoon a friend and I toured a large Hindu temple. It was an amazing experience!
One Sunday afternoon, Cranston and I were looking for a change of pace. It had been a busy week at the hospital, and this was our day off.
So we decided to go for a walk, and see what would happen.
Of course, it wasn’t that easy for us white foreigners to simply “go for a stroll.” The Chennai area was home to millions of people, and it seemed like millions of them swarmed us when we were walking.
Some people asked us about the world we came from. Other people begged for money. Still other people asked us for medical help.
On our walk, we stopped to visit Anandi. She was a lovely woman who used to come visit the Believers group at our rented house.
She was intelligent and slender. She was a devout Hindu. She was very spiritual and very much in love with the One God. And she was blind.
Cranston had a romantic interest in Anandi.
That Sunday, Cranston led our walk directly to Anandi’s door. He rang the doorbell. Anandi’s mom appeared at the door. Cranston asked for Anandi.
Anandi’s mom spoke Tamil, which was an official language for the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. She didn’t speak English.
Cranston and I, on the other hand, spoke but a few words in Tamil.
Yet we always found it amazing how much can be communicated with body language, facial expressions, and a few dozen words.
Anandi’s mom said she wasn’t in. So we said nundri, which means “thanks.” We stepped back out into the street, teeming with people and sweltering heat.
The heat!
My summers back in the midwest were nothing compared to the sweltering summer of Chennai.
In the afternoons, the sun-baked pavement would get so hot that it would stick to our flip-flops.
At night, we slept underneath ceiling fans. But it was still so hot that we could scarcely sleep.
When we woke in the morning, the temperature was already more than a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.
The heat had another effect, one that was strangely invasive: odors.
The odor of raw garbage and human feces and urine, stewing away in the 120-degree heat, broiling on the pavement, was eye-watering.
But this street we were walking on didn’t have as pungent of an aroma. It was more clean, it was less crowded, and it was more quiet.
We paused briefly to look around. We saw a large Hindu temple across the street. We saw its aqua-colored perimeter wall.
We saw the rooflines of various small structures inside the temple area. We faintly heard Hindu priests chanting their Scriptures together in Sanskrit. And we picked up the fragrance of incense, which is typically lit at Hindu temples.
I could see it on Cranston’s face, and he could see it on mine.
We talked. It turns out that we had both wanted to visit a big Hindu temple. And here we were, right in front of one, with time on our hands and nowhere to go.
We didn’t know if they’d let us in. We weren’t Indian, and we weren’t Hindus.
Should we try? If we did, would we inadvertently create a scene?
Curiosity got the best of us.
As we walked toward the entrance of the temple, we noticed that the men were wearing their lungi in the formal way.
A lungi is like a skirt. In south India, most men wore a lungi. It was way too hot for trousers.
In ordinary situations, men roll up their lungi so the hem is at knee height. But in formal situations, they fold it so it goes all the way from the waist to the ankles.
At the temple, all the men were wearing their lungi formally.
So Cranston and I stopped. We adjusted our lungi to the full-length formal position.
As we entered the portico, a man greeted us. He wanted us to leave our sandals with him.
I was reminded of Abram, whom God told to take off his sandals in the presence of The Holy (see Exodus 3:5).
This man at the portico gave us a ticket to reclaim our sandals when we exited.
Cranston politely scolded the man for making money from people’s religious devotion.
We continued inward to the main entrance, barefoot. Despite the heat of the afternoon sun, the stone flooring was pleasant to walk on. It was cool to the touch, and it was worn smooth by the footsteps of countless visitors for centuries.
Coming toward us was an older man with a large beard. His gestures and facial expression indicated that we weren’t allowed.
We chatted for a few moments. He gestured for us to wait. He walked around the corner and disappeared.
He promptly returned carrying a small canister of red ash in his hand. He stood in front of Cranston, rubbed his thumb into the red ash, and smeared some onto Cranston’s forehead. Next, he did the same for me.
Finally, he smiled and gestured for us to enter.
We had been given a bindi. A bindi is a bright dot applied in the center of the forehead close to the eyebrows. It is mainly worn by people in the Indian subcontinent, but also by people throughout Asia.
I wondered if going to a Hindu temple was like going to a Jewish synagogue.
At a synagogue, even if you are not Jewish, you are asked to wear a Kippah, also known as a yarmulke.
Presently, we wandered around inside the temple.
It was beautiful. The artwork was ancient and in excellent condition. Fresh flowers and garlands were everywhere.
We noticed elaborate chalk drawings on the floor. We stepped around them, lest we destroy somebody’s hard work.
There were lots and lots of statues of deities. People bowed down to them in worship.
People from the west often perceive this incorrectly. They imagine Hindus think the stone statue itself is a living god. Therefore they call these stone statues “idols.”
But several knowledgeable Hindus told us the statues are simply depictions of God.
When a Hindu bows down to worship the statue, they are really worshipping the One God that it represents.
After we had absorbed enough, we left. At the entrance, we stepped back into our sandals.
We walked back to our house, thankful for an uplifting encounter with Hinduism.
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