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Saints and Poets
They would not let him in, so he sang at the back wall - and the temple has faced the wrong way ever since.
He was not allowed in, so he stood outside and sang, and the god turned round.
That is the Udupi story in one line, and Karnataka has been telling it for four hundred years. Kanakadasa came to the Krishna temple at Udupi and was refused entry on account of his birth. He would not leave. He stood at the back of the shrine - the wall behind the deity - and sang there, day after day. And the wall cracked. And the image of Krishna turned in its place to face west, toward the man outside.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.