Yessir! It’s happening once again!

If Ganesh idols were drinking milk then, it is sea water turning sweet in Mumbai now! (In between we had the ‘monkey man’ in India’s capital city!)

The ‘milk drinking’ is due to the phenomenon of ‘surface tension’ where the milk sticks in a very thin layer — practically invisible to the naked eye — to the edge of the spoon and travels from there to the lips of the idols, to the chin and all the way to the floor. If need be, please pick up a high-school physics book, and you would understand it very easily!

The sweetness of the sea water is being explained as post-monsoon dilution of salinity.

Even though I believe the scientific explanations completely, for me that is just one aspect of this issue.

The other aspect is — WHAT’S THE BIG DEAL?

So what if the idols were drinking milk, huh?
So what if the sea water is less salty than usual, huh?
What does this do for you? Makes your life less miserable, huh?

Yet we have people (urban, educated and economically better-off) in this day and age falling for, and willing to swallow this crap (literally too**), in double-quick haste and not waiting/wanting to seek a logical/rational explanation for that.

And that’s the miracle for me, sadly!

Even as I close this post, I see news on India TV that the idols drinking milk scam is back, and I can very clearly see this time around it’s not about injecting the opium into the masses in an innovative way, but in a competitive way.

 

** Mahim creek, the site for this sweet water ‘miracle’, is otherwise better known as the point where passengers on Mumbai’s western train line generally get up from their sleep due to an overpowering foul sewage smell, while passing by!