Twenty minutes had taught him that places are not merely backdrops for ritual; they are assemblies of people carrying what they must carry, sharing what they can. The website’s headline read, simply: Guruvayoorambala Nadayil —20. The piece was modest, but it held — as the banyan held — many small lives together.

On the next dawn, the procession resumed. People still danced and made offerings. The road was still called Nadayil, and the temple lamp was still a lamp. Only now the village’s small economy of care had a new rivulet running through it — strangers who had watched from far away and been moved to send a parcel, an old man's photographed face pinned like a small medal in the temple office, and Ravi, who learned that stories that take twenty minutes can last a lifetime.