Nobody knew for certain what was hidden beneath the ancient Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, in Trivandrum, India. But a lawyer named Ananda Padmanabhan had a hunch. According to legend, treasure was sealed in the temple vaults, and Padmanabhan, who was passionate about history, knew that in centuries past maharajas had performed a ceremony in which they weighed local princes approaching adulthood, then donated to the temple an equivalent weight in gold. Padmanabhan believed that these riches were still hidden in the basement, uncounted and unguarded.
Padmanabhan, who is thirty-nine, has spent his life in Trivandrum, which is at the southwestern tip of India, in the state of Kerala. His home and his law office are on historic Brahmin Street, just outside the gates of the temple, which has a monumental seven-story tower whose pale granite façade is a tapestry of stone, etched with ornate images of gods, nymphs, sprites, and demons. On the day that I had arranged to meet Padmanabhan, in mid-October, I found him in the middle of the street, barefoot, in a downpour. He was staring at the temple, as if in a trance. I tried to get his attention, but couldn’t. Eventually, a clerk from his office brought him an umbrella, which he took without turning his head.
After several minutes, Padmanabhan looked at me, smiled, and explained that he had been praying. There was a festival that day, and the temple’s custodians had removed an idol from the sanctum sanctorum and were parading it around a courtyard. He was hoping to get a glimpse of it. The idol, he told me, “is like an incarnation of God, so it is as if God himself is coming out of the temple.” Like many observant Hindus, Padmanabhan believes that a temple’s deity—in this case, the supreme god Vishnu—resides within its walls. Worshippers come to make offerings of flowers, incense, silver, and gold. Whatever wealth accumulates belongs to the deity. Padmanabhan told me that it had become his driving purpose in life to serve Vishnu and, in so doing, protect the deity’s hoard. He explained, “In Lord Krishna’s Bhagavad Gita, he says we are only small things before the great lord. So if he says, ‘Dance,’ we dance, and if he says, ‘Sit,’ we sit. I am just a mosquito before him.”