Not far from Godwalia in Varanasi sits the Mukti Bhavan. This photo shows a ceremony I witnessed one morning, conducted by the resident ritual priests. The woman was a participant in the ceremony. Later on in the proceedings she would also bring in her baby. I was not sure exactly what the ceremony was for.
The main priest is sitting to the right, holding up a funnel ending in a curved spout. Priests line the back wall, chanting and playing musical instruments. On the floor in front of them is an array of ritual implements that were systematically laid out in the intial stages of the ceremony. These include the centrepiece, a round tray in which a stand mounted with a cobra finial was set. During this part of the ritual, the woman was responsible for scooping up milk from the pail in the foreground and pouring it into the funnel, held so that the milk would flow from the spout onto the cobra and then trickle down the stand to be collected in the tray. Here she can be seen pouring the milk directly over the stand. The entire process of pouring the milk took around 30 minutes.
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