Bless This Mouse
Since I have been back from India I have been upsetting quite a lot of people with my tales of poo and such. However, there is one excursion that we took on the trip which seems more likely to make people shiver than others.
It is the last day of the trip and the trip leader has a “surprise” for us. We are promised that we will see something that we have never seen before. The surprise is 90 minutes away on a bus and for some reason we are told to bring socks.
On the way the surprise is revealed. We are visiting “The Rat Temple”.
Now, for a laugh, I would like you all to picture Judith Chalmers of “Holiday Programme” fame standing, as she did, in a bathing suit, sarong and white shirt tied at the waist, delivering this link to camera in an effort to introduce the next feature on holidays in Rajasthan.
“The Karni Mata Temple was built by Maharaja Ganga Singh in the early 20th century in the late Mughal style. The story goes that Karni Mata once tried to restore the dead child of a storyteller back to life but failed because Yama, the god of death, had already accepted his soul and re-incarnated him in human form. Karni Mata, famed for her legendary temper, was so inflamed by her failure that she announced that no one from her tribe would fall into Yama’s hands again.
“Instead, when they died, all of them would temporarily inhabit the body of a rat before being reborn into the tribe. Therefore, the rats are considered to be incarnations of storytellers and are much revered. Therefore the temple is home to a shitload of filthy rats. Let’s join Anneka Rice and her young family as they sample the delights of Rajasthan and the Karni Mata Rat Temple…..”
Yes, the Rat Temple is not just a name, it is an actuality. The place is swarming with legions of them. And they are not the cute ones, either. They are manky, warty, deformation bearing, filthy, massive brutes. Not content with being vile as they are, many of them are sporting disproportionately gigantic genitalia, just for that extra nausea factor.
And the socks? Well, everyone knows you need to take your shoes off to enter a Hindu temple, don’t they?
Personally, I didn’t bother with the sock idea. Somehow, I reasoned that rat urine would still reach my feet if it soaked through my socks. Rat-pee absorbing socks actually disturbed me more than going barefoot for some reason. I went au naturel through the rat excrement and pee. Skipping gaily as I went. With a song in my heart. And a tic in my left eye.
Before we left the bus, Meeester, told us all the story of the Rat Temple. “All rats would be worshipped and cared for as they would be reincarnated into tribesmen. And remember that of course Ganesh did ride about on a rat, so the rat is worshipped generally in Hinduism”
I felt my eyes roll to the back of my head. Now I’ve heard everything. God bless those little blighters and their Bubonic Plague; they’re holy! The misunderstood little buggers. What’s next? A slug shrine? A maggot palace? A cockroach chapel?
There are a couple of things we should know before we go in:
1. If you stand on a rat and kill it (fairly likely- if one of the disease ridden bastards so much as touches me, it’s getting reincarnated right there and then) you must pay money to the temple. Really, a collection plate would be so much easier. Still, then you wouldn’t get to kill a rat. I check how much money I have with me to see how many I can afford to squish.
2. If one (gulp) runs over your feet, it’s lucky! (although if one runs over my feet it’s luck will have run out, as I’ll hoof the bugger skyward)
3. Special luck goes to the person who spots The White Rat. Oh goody; a game! How much do we owe if we squish the white rat? We have a whip round.
4. The rats have plates of food lying about for them. Feel free to bring your own food and have a picnic with the vermin. It’s lucky! Even better- dip your fingers into the dishes of rice the disease ridden buggers are eating and help yourself! It’s even more lucky! No joke- we SAW people doing this.
Still, in poured the tourists. And good luck to them. They’ve got their PR sown up.
I am currently writing to the Church of Scotland Head Office in Edinburgh to suggest that they take strident action to increase the number of bums on seats at the Sunday Services. At last, a refuge for the kebab-fuelled shitehawk seagulls of Aberdeen, and a home for the mangy, one-footed pigeons of Glasgow. All hail the holy flying rats. Let us worship at your webbed scaly feet!
So, in summary:
- Journey to Rat Temple: 90 minutes
- Time in Rat Temple: 10 minutes
- Journey back to hotel: 90 minutes
- Time spent scrubbing feet with antibacterial soap, Dettol, bleach, iodine, metholated spirits and wire wool: Forever.
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