Feeling full of good cheer we now climb the steep steps up to the nearest temple just a touch further south, the Sitala Temple. The bells will guide you there; there are dozens of them and most of them seem to ring most of the time. Shoes off and in we go. Ding dong ding dong. It’s quite a racket, as loud as the horns heard in the back of a rickshaw, and I head back out more or less immediately counter-clockwise against the flow. Twain reckoned it wise to pray “in the temple sacred to Sitala, goddess of smallpox. Her under-study is there—a rude human figure behind a brass screen.” Looking back in through the bars I can see a figure there but he’s not very rude—in fact he’s downright handsome and certainly has seen no smallpox. A few minutes later the others reappear, having done the circuit. They all look a bit bell-shocked but don’t seem to have caught the pox, small or other wise.
(The Indian Equator p 78)