There were the same signs at roughly the same time. In September 1995, it was Ganesh alone who had been kind enough to drink out of the hands of mortals. This time, his parents too seem to have consented to play the divine game in large tracts of north India. But western India and the South have not been denied such blessings either. Only days before the gods of the Hindu pantheon started sipping milk, thousands near Mahim Creek in central Mumbai and Valsad on the Gujarat coast gulped down mouthfuls of sea-water which had turned ‘sweet’. This was supposedly under the influence of a Sufi saint whose shrine is located close by. Meanwhile, divine wonders are also at work in that most progressive of Indian states, Kerala, where a house in Fort Kochi has reported tears in the eyes of an idol of the Virgin Mary. Never before have the gods appeared to be so propitious, or humans more willing to suspend their disbelief. A bomb-struck Mumbai, busy learning the arts of suspicion, thought nothing of letting its guards down to drink water from an area that receives a significant portion of the city’s sewage and industrial effluents. The cola giants could not but be pleased by their preferences.

By now, rationalists and sceptics have cried themselves hoarse over the ‘capillary action’ of the rough surfaces of idols as explanation for the gods’ drinking abilities, or how Mumbai’s fearsome monsoon may be responsible for the decreased salinity in sea-water. But can anything as simple as these explanations dissuade the ‘believer’ in India, that ignorant bearer of centuries-old superstitions who now seems to be more confused than ever by the progress made by the nation, socially and economically? The mass hysteria that India witnesses today, cutting across religious and social boundaries, seems to encapsulate this peculiar state of mind. Happening shortly before the season of festivals and after a series of nerve-wracking terror attacks, this confluence of ‘miracles’ is an entirely happy occurrence for a country suddenly facing a series of crises — of faith in its own abilities, of confidence in its identity as a nation of diverse peoples, and of belief in its own humanity.