Sri Maha Mariamman Temple, Kuala Lumpur

In the middle of the Petaling Street bustle, between Chinese shophouses and clan temples, a tower crowded with painted gods suddenly rises above the street. It has five tiers, stands about 23 metres high and carries 228 figures, the work of artisans from South India led by the sculptor S. T. Muniappa of Tamil Nadu. Shoes come off at the entrance, and inside is a long prayer hall under a richly decorated ceiling. At its far, western end, in a sanctum with its own walls and roof, Sri Maha Mariamman faces east towards the door.

Read the layout as a figure stretched out face up, with its head at the western end and its feet at the east. The tower marks the feet, where everyday life gives way to worship; the sanctum is the head. Pillaiyar sits to the goddess's left and his brother Murugan to her right, and Pillaiyar also greets you at the entrance as the remover of obstacles. The eight forms of Lakshmi decorate the pillars, the walls carry Italian and Spanish tiles, and onion domes over the three main shrines can be seen from the street. Four smaller shrines stand around the main building.

For Tamils who crossed the sea, Mariamman is above all a protector: a form of Parvati, the fierce power of Mother Earth, who keeps her people safe in a foreign land. That is how this temple began. K. Thamboosamy Pillai, born in Singapore in 1850, came to Kuala Lumpur as an interpreter and a senior lawyer's assistant, saw how many South Indians had settled in Selangor, and in 1873 built them a small shrine to Mariamman. For its first decades it was his family's private shrine.

The great day here is the Thaipusam procession, the one time the silver chariot leaves the temple. Craftsmen in India used 350 kg of silver for it; it came by ship in twelve pieces to be put together in KL, and it is hung with 240 bells and drawn by two sculpted horses. With Murugan, Valli and Theivanai aboard, it sets off at about 10 pm two nights before Thaipusam, crawls through the city for around sixteen hours with devotees walking behind, and reaches the Sri Subramaniar temple at Batu Caves the next afternoon, where the rooster flag is raised to open the festival. In the small hours of Thaipusam itself, thousands more start from this temple for Batu Caves with milk pots and kavadis.

The first shrine, set up by Thamboosamy Pillai's family in 1873, stood close to where the KL railway station is. When the railway wanted that land to extend its goods yard, a small attap-roofed temple was built in 1875, with the Sultan of Selangor's permission, on Jalan Bandar, today's Jalan Tun H.S. Lee; a brick building later replaced it. In the late 1920s the family opened the temple to the public and handed its management to a board of trustees. A teak chariot for Thaipusam was made in 1930. Today's building went up in stages: the main structure was ready by 1968, the gateway tower followed in 1972, and consecration came a year later, in 1973. The silver chariot made its first journey to Batu Caves on 21 January 1983. The temple is reconsecrated every twelve years, and the six-storey Bangunan Mariamman behind it, with car parks and halls, opened later. Its trust, the Sri Maha Mariamman Devasthanam, also looks after Batu Caves and the Kortumalai Pillaiyar temple, and it is the body the Malaysian government consults when fixing Hindu calendar dates.

Tamils living far from home pray to Mariamman to protect them and their families. On Thaipusam the custom is to fulfil vows to Murugan by carrying milk pots and kavadis from here to Batu Caves on foot. This is a devotional practice and no result is promised; check that you are fit for the long walk before you take it on.