thank you brahmanyan for your kind and consoling words. two other incidents that haunts me from that trip ... the ganapaadigal deputed one of the poor brahmins to be our guide/priest for a 4 hour boat ride during which my sister cooked 3 or 4 separate instances of pindams. this was a gentle soft spoken soul who had empathy in him and treated us ever so gently. at the end of it all, we handed him some money which he refused. he felt that this was his duty as asked by the ganapaadigal, and to accept any money would be going against his conscience. my sister and i had tears flowing on hearing this. we had to go a few times to the ghats to throw vadai/neyyappam. we had to throw these into the ganges, and no sooner done, we saw street urchins and stray dogs diving into the river, and usually the urchins got caught the batchanams, to anger and growling of the dogs. still this thought churns my stomach. since then, i have often wondered, how badly my pithurs wanted all this! i do not believe that this was a test of my faith. i simply had no idea what to expect. my late mother, during her final years, had told me that she had no more faith, and she warned me against performng any ceremonies after she had gone. maybe she knew her son, and what he could handle. thank you again and God Bless.