The last thing my mom told me before she entered the airport was, “visit a temple, I did not have the time for it.” And so it was upon on my father and me to visit a temple and seek lord Almighty’s blessings on behalf of my mom.

We had planned to go to the temple close to our home, on the main road, in the evening. As going to a temple also involved a cleanliness factor, we took bath and got dressed and made sure we were presentable to God. With Rs 10 in my hand for the hundi/pujari we set out. Since this temple is on the main road, not many people visit it. So when we arrived at the temple, the old sweeper woman of the temple was about to lock the gates. But since this temple was the only temple in the locality and we had to do our duty, we sought her permission and entered the holy portals of the generic amman kovil.

With a cursory glance at the temple, I figured that this temple was clean and attributed the cleanliness to the lack of patronage of the temple. Maybe our timing was unholy (raahukalam, yamagandam types), all the Gods were locked up in their little quarters, which left us with no choice but to take a walk around the temple trying to figure who are the gods that are locked up. While we went from one cabin to another, the sweeper woman looked at us with great amusement.

Having completed the tour round the temple, I walked up to the sweeper woman and handed over some money to her since the hudis were locked up too. That’s when she told me, ‘you walked around the temple the wrong way, and you should go the other way.’

I wonder if the Gods blessed my mother. All has been well since the temple visit nothing disastrous has occurred yet. But just in case anything does happen, I know where I went wrong.

PS: We did go round the right way. But then I wondered, that only cancels the effect of the wrong tour; we should have walked the right way twice. Maybe.