India, Sept. 5 -- The images arrive every year, each more elaborate than the last. A tiny Krishna is given admission to a school, taken for a heartbeat check, addressed as mera laala. Elsewhere, a human tower climbs a hundred feet so one young man can risk his neck to break a pot of curd and earn some merit.

A temple priest brought all this to me recently, a man who installs idols for a living. He asked a plain question: can such service, offered to the symbol, ever help in the melting away of the ego? Or has the deity himself become one more object of craving?

That question is the whole festival. It carries two Krishnas. One is fashioned: the butter-thief on his swing, dancing among the gopis, easy to remember, for he asks nothing of y...