For many, the worship of Ma Durga ultimately reflects an interior struggle. One identifies with her through devotion, and gains the courage and strength of will to face terrible enemies. These foes are more likely to be aspects of ourselves, of our own personalities and behavior, than the flesh and blood monsters she faced. We are exiled in the wilderness of our lives, and the devotee seeks some measure of Durga's strength to find his or her way through to contentment and understanding.

I shivered and gripped the sides of the boat out of a sudden fear that he was going to steal my camera, that they had brought me out onto this boat to beat me up and take whatever I had, my money and my passport, my shoes, my traveler's checks, and dump me over the side into the dark river, like the murtis. Perhaps they'd even drown me. I was suddenly very tired, and felt like I needed to vomit. It was then that I realized all the camera meant to me.

The camera was a distancing device, one designed to keep me at a degree of remove from what was happening all around me, to preserve my role as an observer rather than a participant. It was a mark of money and privilege, an object of more wealth than many Indians would see in a lifetime. It was an emblem of power, of scientific detachment and literalness, an emblem of the West -- of America -- itself. It was just these things I had thought I'd left behind.

The boy smiled and handed the camera back to me. Just then, it started to rain. A few thin drops fell over my face and broke the flat surface of the river. Orange and yellow light shimmered on the dark water. Ma Durga had slain Mahishasura, the buffalo demon, and released the water he held in his gut to fall as rain upon the earth. The boy looked at me and smiled.

"Ah, Jantaman, the rain. The rain is very fine."

When we finally left the boat, I could only stumble, my legs wouldn't work. One of the boys put his arm around my shoulder and helped me up the bank from the river to a little square above the ghats. For a while I still couldn't stand on my own. It seemed as though they wanted me to come somewhere with them, but it was difficult to tell for sure. Anyway, I was exhausted, too tired to go on any further, certain I had just enough energy to get back to my room.

I thanked them as best I could, and started back up the street the way we'd come. Walking the streets I was like a ghost, a barely seen, unsettling presence. I tried to follow the rise of the land up from the river but was at once terribly lost. I realized, too late, that I'd missed my turn and had been walking along a street perpendicular to the river. Now I had even farther to go. I began to backtrack. The crowd had thinned here, and the streets were nearly empty. The rain fell harder, enriching the Ganges. It was her own water, stolen from her, now returned. In her long journey from the Himalayas, on her way to the sea, much had been taken from her. Her water fed and bathed all those along her banks, it cleaned their laundry and accepted their refuse, it nurtured cattle, oxen, and packs of dogs. She gave her moisture to the very air, and purified the ashes of the dead burnt on her banks. Now the dark clouds were split open, what had been taken from her was restored, and the Ganges flowed wider on her way to the sea.

Above the streets, bleak windows stared outward. The houses stretched in long clustered rows like skulls hung from Kali's hips. The night itself was Durga. She watched me with countless eyes as earlier she had moved through the crowd, laughing with countless voices, reaching with countless hands. Through her worship, the lost are restored to their way, the missing are made whole, the lonely are returned to those who love them. I had been wandering through the wilderness, not of India, not of the night, but of my own urge to lose myself, to erase what I knew of myself and see what was left. I had been poisoned by the desire to rub away friends, habits, comforts, family, life, to rub until I was clear. But I did not become clear; I was only rubbed away, bit by bit. There was simply less of me.

I wanted my small life back, wanted its small and familiar pleasures. I wanted what I had abandoned. I was scared, I'd slogged how many blocks and seemed no closer to the end. The streets there seemed nameless, none of them were familiar. I wanted to vomit, or cry, or simply curl asleep in the gutter.

Just then, a bicycle rickshaw lurched down the empty street from behind me, headed in the same direction. From out of the shadow of the hooded passenger bench came a voice:

"Jantaman!"

I stared as the rickshaw came to a halt beside me. I peered in at the passengers in disbelief. They were, indeed, the same two boys I'd met at the start of the night. We rode up, back the way I'd come, squeezed together on the little bench. There was no way for me to explain to them what had happened, but it wasn't necessary. The impossibility of the coincidence that had just occurred was evident to all of us.

For some reason, it only became clear to me during the heaving, shaky trip back up from the river what "Jantaman" meant. They were actually saying "gentleman," using a polite form of address they must have learned at school.

Back in my hotel room, I stripped off my damp clothes and sank into bed. Ghosts stirred by the ceiling fan flitted through the dusty air. I watched the strange, tall window which looked out onto the hallway, beside the door to my room. It seemed to open onto a larger night than I had known before, a night that watched me as intently as I watched it.