THE FLAME OF BHUVANESHWARI

July 2023

Past Kamakhya, atop Nilachal, quietly sits Bhuvaneshwari, watching over the Brahmaputra and much of Guwahati like a mother.

On one side of the temple, a few steps into the alley, stands a two-headed statue wrapped in a yellow diaphanous cloth and smeared with vermillion, and an old tree bedecked with golden glitter and red and orange threads that the scared and the devout keep tying around it.

Next to the tree is a corner for lamps and incense sticks.

One lamp, larger than the rest, is rather restless, tilting at the winds, flicking like a snake, constantly shifting shape, oblivious to the supplications of the thin white fragrant trails.

It seems lost in its own rumination or its own devotional dervish dance.

~*~