Last night my friend, after watching Aaj-tak, told me “Your Mahim is in the news, Subhan. Seems like some miracle had happened near Baba Makhdoom’s Dargah.� The news channels were running stories of the Mahim sea having miracously turned sweet. This change, first noted by a teen, spread quickly all over Mumbai and within hours there were ten thousand people thronging the beach to take a holy sip and dip.
Subhan Ahsan writes at Indian Muslims
Well India is a land of superstitious beliefs and this incident was no different. But what surprises me is the fact that educated people are also a part of this insane drama. For them this is religion and being pious means being a regular visitor to these shrines. Its a short cut for them to escape the ardent religious doctrines. They don’t realize that the grave has absolutely no basis in religion. The pious saint would have never expected that his grave turn into an extravaganza some day and that the God, he is so obsequious to, would replace him as the exalted.
Even my family is no exception to this. I was once asked my by mother to go pray at a Dargah. Stubbornly I agreed. The scene there further added to my sense of loathing for the place. There were uneducated people desperately praying to the saint to get rid of the quagmire they are under. Some where prostrating to the grave. The whole place was adorned with fancy and lamps and the grave under the weight of layers of chadars. I somehow managed to stay for few minutes, so as to satiate my mother’s wish, but vowed never to return to that place. People have turned the whole place into a money making business with the dalals pleading for donation from the passer by and in many cases pestering them.
Remember the idol drinking milk incident? One of my friend even claimed that even the picture drank milk! Why this sudden thirst for milk? It was published in major newspapers and it got the hype it never deserved but still ‘It happens only in India’ 
THERE WAS no miracle at Mahim Creek on Friday, as a strange monsoon madness struck thousands — including Mayor Datta Dalvi who exulted Chamatkar ho gaya (it’s a miracle)! — desperate to be part of a ‘miracle’: salty seawater turning sweet.
Only, as police struggled to control the multitudes flocking to the western seaboard from across the city, nobody told the believers that the salty taste of seawater across India’s coastline naturally drops during the monsoon due to an inflow of freshwater, markedly so at low tide.
The faithful — Muslim, Hindu and Christian — in search of a supernatural phenomenon, cupped seawater in their palms, even bottling and selling the murky water. But they risk infections from tasting some of India’s filthiest water, which reeks of faecal wastes from humans, animals, and industrial waste.
MPCB: Freshwater is lighter than seawater, floats on surface, and tastes sweet NIO: Mithi River inflow and low tide reduced salinity. Normal monsoon phenomenon GLASSFUL FROM CREEK 1,000 mn litres sewage flows into Mahim Creek daily 1 lakh - 1 mn bugs/100ml water
Technorati Tags: mahim, dargah, sea water turned sweet
{ 0 comments… add one now }
Leave a Comment