Perumal Temple (bwj)

After One Store, c 5pm or so, we stopped at the Perumal Temple, took off our footwear, and went into the forecourt. My Chacos, when I wore them for all the walking on Monday, had raised blisters on the outer edges of my heels, so the next three days I wore socks and shoes; thus, taking off both, I had also to wash my feet before entering the temple; those wearing sandals washed their bare feet, those keeping their socks on do not have to wash. We didn't stay long inside. I have only a vague sense of how this sort of sacred space is laid out, though it seems the space gets progressively more holy as you approach the central shrine of the god or goddess, where [I believe I understand] only the priests may go. At another temple we'd visited on Monday, as I came to the entry steps, a security officer seeing D's digital camera slung from my wrist had gestured "no pictures" by first holding his hands around his eyes camera-fashion and then crossing them at the wrists, at which I smiled and nodded and put the camera in my pocket. So at the Perumal Temple I kept the camera in my pocket, other than taking a picture of the gopuram [gate] with its sculptures of divinities enjoying their divinity. D took one of me putting my socks and shoes back on.

From there, as I recall, we went back to the MRT, boarded, changed at Outram Park to the green line, and rode back to Buona Vista to walk home. We stopped at the Ghim Moh Gardens market for a soy milk/herbal jelly drink Gita wanted us to try. Our supper was mostly leftovers from yesterday: Gita's fish-head stew with rice, and her excellent puri, which one can dip into any sauce or fill with whatever is on the plate, and which I prefer above all to spread cherry preserves on. Poor people used to eat fish heads, but now they are a delicacy. I admit that although the meat you can pry and probe from the head is, well, fish, I prefer the pieces of more normal-looking fillet. I think I was working with an upper jaw. This was one fish you didn't want to meet while snorkeling: teeth about the size and shape of cat-claws, looking like a cross between cat-claws and shark teeth. Still, this fish did not appear in my dreams.