The context:
Nine Emperor God festival in Sungei Way village, October 2024.
Thaipusam festival in George town, Penang, February 2025.

The free fall:
Giving in to half a lifetime of being on the outside looking in.

The literature (because there is always some kind of literature)
Culture.

The dilemma:
The collation of images immediately appear too simple. They are painfully parallel.
Par exemple, I have paired bare feet with more bare feet. Child being held with child being held differently. Babies deep in the kind of universal baby sleep that never finds you again as an adult. Where there is smoke, there is someone tossing a gallon of oil onto live coals.
It wasn't a curation process I agonised over. Patterns have been spelled out so clearly, you couldn't not read them if you tried.

There is no open-ended storytelling here,
and so the only way to go is backwards.

We could start with journeys.

I made my way around George town primarily on foot. The professor I visited - read: the primary objective of my being there - dropped me off a healthy distance away from the epicentre of action, waved a hand in the general direction of town, and left me standing by Penang Free School with a "Look both ways before crossing the road! There's a live tracker for the silver chariot! Good luck!".
There's a live tracker for the silver chariot.
I have never before ambushed a procession, just cats, so nothing quite prepared me for the ensuing hour of feverishly switching between navigation apps while dodging motorcycles and weaving through standstill traffic to finally catch my first sight of the statue of Lord Murugan in full splendour at the intersection of Jalan Dato Keramat and Jalan Gurdwara.

In Sungei Way village, which is a British-colonial era relic purported to be a response to communist insurgency in the 1950s, the Nine Emperor Gods were on their way as well.
On the first day, the Gods are welcomed to shore. On the ninth day, they are sent home. This journey begins from temple grounds, heading towards any waterway.

Where are they going?
Ask the Internet, and it will point to historical archives muddied by conflicting folklore, religious teachings, and AI-generated essays.
Ask a worshipper, and they will point to the stars.

We head further backwards.

In this chapter, the journey has not yet become a pilgrimage.
It is still a belief to be acted upon. And it is this same belief that draws a temple from the ground, draws families to the temple, draws blood from flesh.
It is here that we find our patterns.
Veneration in varying degrees, across both festivals, is central to meaning.
Across both festivals, watching the flame, blades, and heat, I think 'sacrifice'.
Across both festivals, observing the parent-child dyads, I think 'love'.
Devotion and pain are inextricable from each and I do not know if thinking too little or too much is the answer. The questions rise above the drumming and chanting. How do we embody the sacred rituals and contend with the undeniable soundness of being one's Self?
Have I inherited my forefathers' unresolved conflict, or have I just spent too much time in the West?
What is the cultural equivalent of touching grass?

Another pattern:
There is little to no jostling, simply a pressing forward towards a/the deity/deities.
Here is a regimented religious fervour, and everyone is the better for it. Community and policing co-exist seamlessly in these spaces.

Perhaps this is one such answer to the previous questions.
You can stand before a sword-wielding man struck by a spirit, and wait in line for your turn to receive your blessing.
You can touch the foot of God, then pay for your parking ticket.

Kaja Silverman writes of photography as an ontological calling card, also a revelation.
In relation to the former, it helps us to see that each of us is 'a node in a vast constellation of analogies'.
To the latter, it is the world's primary way of revealing itself to us - 'of demonstrating that it exists, and that it will forever exceed us.'

This could be another answer.

The silver chariot is now back to where it first began, still and silent till the next journey, and I do not have a tracking link for the Nine Emperor Gods so I could not tell you where they are at this moment.

But I can tell you that Sungei Way means river way, and that my parents, and their parents, have lived, and sacrificed, and loved, to the best of their abilities, along the path that guides even the gods home.
Maybe it can be that simple.