Boredom
There is boredom and repetition in temple life. Cook bhog, string garlands, arrange wicks on twigs for arati, get sweets and fruits from the market. Eat, rest, drink sugary tea with biscuits, prepare for evening rituals. Wake up at 4am the next day. Rinse and repeat.
I witness sometimes the morning, and more often, the evening routines closely. Only rarely, the 5am rituals. God lives endlessly, across years and decades, through sections of the day marked by dressing, undressing, being bathed, being decorated, being fed, and on special days, coming forward a bit closer to the devotee. The temple seva - I call them temple craftsmen, actually, craftswomen, a lot of them, although the actual seva is done by a male priest. The everyday running of a temple strikes as endless repetition. Much like the pattern of japa - the mahamantra uttered 108 times, best if chanted 16 times a day.
Same as the dandamati parikrama. You lie down on your chest on a rectangular thermocol sheet, mark the distance of the next step with a stone, get up on your legs, set the thermocol sheet at the place where the stone was placed, and lie down again from that point. Continue this until the circumambulation or parikrama is complete. I once spotted a child doing it. No one seemed to think this was a difficult thing for a restless child to accomplish. Perhaps, this is what they mean when they say sadhana. I wake up, make coffee, answer emails, read and write, take the rickshaw, haggle over the same price, get off near the ghat, walk past the bazaar and Nidhivan which is everyone’s destination, and come here. Many guides ask me if I want to shown around, I say I don’t and I live here, they don’t believe me. I repeat the cycle the next day and the day after. Perhaps, this is my sadhana.
I can’t hold my attention through more than one cycle of 108 chants. But I am secular - at least somewhat, and I am a researcher! I don’t wear the beads around my neck or other sandalwood paste marks on my face. So I must be exempt from these burdens of cyclical boredom. They break time. They gather their energies toward no grand occurrence or culmination. They go from ekadashi to purnima and back. They mark time through the various times of feeding and dressing and bathing thakurji.
I watch their evening humdrum everyday. Often there is an extended silence in the courtyard. Everyone is chanting. I pull out my phone. Two men come often to break the monotone with their deep yet nasal voices, singing the Gitagovindam - jaya jaya deva hare, jaya jaya deva hare.