We arrived in Chennai and then went to a local temple which is 1400 years old. It’s the Hindu legendary Kapaleeswarar Temple.

We walked into the Temple and they were celebrating a 4 day Hindu Festival that included ritual dancing and today turned out to be the last day. We also discovered that Non-Hindus cannot enter the Inner Sanctum of the ancient Temple.

As we continued our tour we went past one of the high priests of the temple. He kept staring at me and shockingly asked if he could do a prayer for me.

He asked for our four names and begin to prepare the ritual “materials.” He turned around and walked a distance into the inner sanctum with garlands and other ceremonial objects. He then proceeded to do the fire offering. He walked backed to us and proceeded to wrap a large garland around my neck and placed a perfect lotus flower in my cupped hands. Lotus flowers hold great significance in the Hindu faith.

Then he put white powder and the red Kunkun on our foreheads. He said that I looked like him with both of us having ponytails and then proceeded to do something highly unusual he placed three horizontal stripes and a special red dot on my forehead and said that I was now a Brahman!

Those markings are reserved only for Brahmans. We were pleasantly bewildered.

When we left from the priest two women approached us and asked if they could take my picture. They had never seen a non-Hindu Brahman before!