Reverse Blessing

This photograph was taken by Flickr User Vinoth Chandar at the famous Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai, India. There is a custom in all south Indian temples where the pilgrims offer money or food to the temple elephant and get a blessing from the elephant in return. Usually the pilgrims will bow in front of the elephant and the elephant will tap its trunk on the pilgrim’s head which is treated as a blessing. The opposite happened here when a pilgrim from abroad got it a little wrong and stood with her back to the prayerful pachyderm. However, she still got her blessing from the elephant.