The Bell at Somnath Still Rings in Me

When you visit a temple as a child, you go for the sweets. When you visit as a young adult, you go with a list of things to fix. When you visit later, you go without a list at all.

I still remember the bell at Somnath. Not the sound of it — the vibration. The way it seemed to sit inside my ribs long after the priest had let go of the rope.

Temples were not built to convince us of anything. They were built to remind us. Of stillness. Of scale. Of the fact that our worries, however heavy, are lighter than a granite pillar that has been holding devotion for a thousand years.

Now, when I visit a temple, I do not ask for very much. I mostly say thank you.

A temple, I have learned, is less a place you go to, and more a place you remember you have always been.