Your Sole Burns for God

A visit to the Birla Mandir, a temple dedicated to Lord Venkateswara this morning, just before noon. All white marble, glinting in the sun, gorgeous. You have to leave your shoes behind, about a block from the bottom of the stairs. The temple itself is at the top of a hill; to get the temple you progress, barefoot across the pavement, to the bag/camera check where you leave your stuff in the care of an army guy, back across the street to the bottom of the stairs, where they check to see if you have a camera, and then if you can, you run up the hot hot hot hot oh fuck its hot gleaming marble stairs. When you get to the top of the hill, you wait in line, clinging to the edges of things where maybe there's shade, anything that's not as white hot as those stairs as you snake around the various side shrines, to Ganesh and a bunch of other guys you don't recognize. Then you go through a metal detector and find a corner to sit, dripping sweat in your eyes, quite literally cooling your heels. Walking across the courtyards, you try not to speed walk, try to smile at the people staring at you, and climb more white-hot stairs to the very top, where you're rewarded with a little breeze. Curse yourself for wearing a long black jersey skirt that traps a considerable amount of heat and try to vent it by imitating a jelly fish, pulling at the swinging fabric and letting it snap back against your very sweaty legs. (You are so going to the fabric store and a tailor next week.) Try to cool off by looking out over the 500 year old manmade lake, Hussain Sagar, where there's a 350 ton statue of Buddha. Proceed to the main temple, try not to compare what people are doing there to what you see in Catholic churches (but you can't help it: kissing the feet of the statues, taking some subtance that the priests are handing out and eating it, touching their foreheads and chests as they leave the shrine all looks really really familiar). Snake your way back down this time slowly and don't push or shove (even though you are being pushed as shoved because, dude, this is a temple and you're a bloody Westerner). Resist the urge to run down the hill to the shoe check because the pavement is really really rough, and hot, and running makes it hurt even more. Grab your shoes and thank every divinity around that you can put your shoes back on.