He had been handed a flower, its five petals so white he thought they sparkled.  Along with a social offering of cash for the bearer of traditions who lived onsite, he was to place the glistening flower as a personal offering at the feet of a statue of a goddess.  As tall as he, her feet accounted for half the sculpture of her.  He could not have in the moment been able to explain why he had not bent low to lay his offering at the bottom of her feet rather than to reach up to place it at the top of them, but, once done, the pilgrims queued up behind him cast down their heads as though to avert his searching eyes.  He had elsewhere seen pilgrims touch the tops of the feet of holy people and assumed the same for their statues, but the difference turned out to be as wide as the one between being visible to others and not.  He quickly corrected himself.  He retrieved his offering and placed the cash and flower at the foot of the goddess’s feet.  No eye lifted up to him.  Could they be offering him a helping hand instead?  He aped them and cast his own eyes down.  An enveloping sensation of being embraced flowed into him, of being nestled in collective arms, and he understood it, because his mind had in a snap switched from being respectfully curious to one offering its deepest respect.