It's midnight. The excitement is palpable around the pipal tree. The chief priest makes his offerings, chanting, while others from his family assist him. The focus of their attention is the staring, inexpressive, diminutive idol of Gadhimai at the base of the tree, wrapped in cloth, besmeared in vermillion and bedecked in flowers. She has travelled down from her small temple nearby to this open field, and now her gaze of the ages reaches beyond the saffron-robed men fussing over her to the thousands upon thousands of devotees massed around her.
Animal sacrifice takes place here on a scale unsurpassed anywhere, a fact the organisers of the Mela are keen to promote as proof of the event's popularity.
The priests are endeavouring to awaken the goddess, and one will have to offer blood from five parts of his body to aid the process. The people wait, in tense expectation, straining to peer into the big earthen jar a light is meant to appear in spontaneously. Some drift off to the rows upon rows of lighted stalls selling knick-knacks, food and clothes, and spend what little money they have on the big fairground rides that sprawl across the fields of Bariyapur.
