It’s festival time at a temple. Hordes of people in colourful
clothes mill about, gaily lit shops sell souvenirs and articles
for rituals, while itinerant vendors sell cheap plastic toys,
religious posters, snacks, and assorted other merchandise.
Discarded plastic bags, wrappers and shards of glass lie strewn
underfoot. Nearby trees bear fresh injuries, their missing limbs
going up in smoke in make-shift wood stoves. Detergent from
washing laundry and human excreta pollute pools and streams.
Loudspeakers from the temple blast religious music while people
hold high decibel conversations. Where pilgrims are allowed to
drive right up to the shrine, the road is littered with dead
fauna. Traffic’s bright headlights blind the animals and then
mow them down. Within a couple of days, people decamp just as
suddenly as they arrived and a pall of silence descends like a
heavy curtain. Birds and animals that abandoned the temple site
when the attack of humanity began will slowly return over the
following days and weeks.