Perspectives

At the  temple we saw tiny star-shaped tortoises in a steel basin, scaling their way up its sides. When we were kids we were treated with the sight of  fully grown tortoises gently crawling the temple premises to our delight. Now there are stars of  kid tortoises wiggling in a steel basin. 

Doesn’t  God ,in his phallic form, love them? That is what we thought then. Shiva loved tortoises, the “hundred gold coins” flowers ,  bilwa leaves and thorns. He had his holy ash of death smeared on his body. He had a throat blue with poison. We offered him a thousand coconuts of water to cool his body down in the heat of the poison.