Delhiwale: A tree in the temple

A woman’s morning ritual

This small Hanuman temple stands in a sprawling yard here in south Delhi. A peepal tree’s sharp-tipped leaves make a jungle of shadows on the temple’s back wall.

“I’m a housewife,” the woman says.

But the compound has another peepal, a larger one, and more luscious, in the front. Its branches soar above the fourth floor windows of adjacent buildings. It would take at least three people to embrace the trunk completely.

This morning the yard is empty. A woman enters. She is wearing a green sari, and an orange mask. Her head is modestly covered by the sari’s pallu. The woman takes off her slippers and, instead of heading inside the temple, she turns towards the front yard peepal. She climbs on to the small cement platform built around the tree. The woman is carrying a small kamandal (cup), filled with water, in one hand, and two agarbattis (incense sticks) in the other. She brings her palms together, bows her head, and murmurs an inaudible prayer. Now she reverently pours the water out of the kamandal by the trunk, lights the agarbattis and tucks them at the base of the tree.

The woman now enters the temple.

Meanwhile, the sun’s rays shoot through the tree, get entangled in the dense foliage, and break into several zigzagging streams of light.