your bridge home
Festivals
He put the bundle down for ten minutes to bathe. When he came back he could not lift it, and he never lifted it again.
There is a temple in Kottayam where the floor is always wet.
Water seeps up around the shrine and will not be drained off, and nobody has ever managed to make it stop. People who go there are told, quite plainly, that this is simply how she likes it.
The story of how she came there goes like this.
A Namboodiri of that district was a devotee of Mookambika, the Goddess of learning. Her great temple stands at Kollur, far up the coast in Karnataka. He made the journey there. He worshipped for a long time. And when at last he turned for home, the tradition says he did not come back alone. She came with him, carried in a bundle, unseen and present.
He walked south for days.
Somewhere near his own country he stopped at a pond to bathe before going on, as anybody would. He set the bundle down at the water's edge, for ten minutes, no more, and went in.
When he came back he bent to pick it up, and it would not move.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.