The day begins before dawn, and the smoke begins before the day does.

Pilgrims start arriving from every district, walking for days or being bused in from across the Terai. The Pashupatinath complex, otherwise a quiet temple complex on the Bagmati river, becomes a city inside a city. The sadhus come first. They have been coming for weeks, from the holy places along the Indian Ganga, from the ashrams of Varanasi, from the caves of Mount Kailash. By the eve of Shivaratri, every square metre of the river bank is occupied by a sadhu in marigolds, in ash, in saffron robes, in nothing at all.

The sadhus are the point. They are the living fossils of a tradition the rest of the country has, by law, abandoned for the other 364 days of the year. They smoke. They pour bhang from brass lotas. They chant, push, shove, and pose. The press photograph them. The state does not intervene. The police, a visible presence on the perimeter, do not enter the inner ghats.

It is, again, a living fossil: a reminder that, in living memory, the entire year used to look like this. The rule does not apply for one night. The country pretends, for that night, that it never really applied at all.

By the morning after, the ghats are empty. The sadhus have moved on. The smoke is in the river. The next Shivaratri is three hundred and sixty-four days away.