In living practice Bhairava is above all a guardian. As Kala Bhairava he is the protector and, in local idiom, the magistrate or kotwal of Varanasi, said to hold jurisdiction over the sacred city; pilgrims traditionally pay their respects to him. In the Ashta Bhairava scheme he guards the eight directions, and his images stand watch at temple boundaries and thresholds across India and Nepal, where, as Kala and Akash Bhairava, he is central to Kathmandu's civic ritual. His worship is often nocturnal and admits offerings (including, in some traditions and places, alcohol) that ordinary temple practice excludes, marking him as a deity of the powerful margins rather than the settled centre. This fierce protector illustrates the Hindu understanding that the same divine power is at once dangerous and defending. At Varanasi, the Kala Bhairava shrine keeps a distinctive civic function still today: newcomers and long-term residents alike are traditionally said to need his permission to reside in the sacred city, a symbolic register of the god as its magistrate that persists in local devotional practice.
In Kathmandu, the enormous mask of Akash Bhairav is unveiled and displayed publicly only during the annual Indra Jatra festival, when a chariot bearing an image of the god processes through the city's streets alongside those of Ganesh and the living goddess Kumari, a striking instance of a fierce, boundary-guarding form of the god given a single great annual civic appearance.