(Original headline: Thousands throng temples as statues 'drink' milk )
LUCKNOW: Hundreds of thousands of devotees thronged temples across India yesterday in the belief that statues of Hindu gods were drinking milk.
"I put a milk-filled spoon to Ganesha's mouth and he drank it," exclaimed Akhilesh Shukla, a trader in Lucknow, capital of northern Uttar Pradesh state.
He was among the countless devotees who carried milk in glasses and pitchers to northern Indian temples.
"It is a miracle," said Sudhir Mishra, a priest at a Shiva temple in Lucknow. He said that at least 10 litres of milk had been offered at his temple yesterday.
"Look at the floor it is fairly dry. Where's the milk gone? It should be visible on the floor. Can you see that?"
Television pictures showed milk disappearing as people held up spoons full of the liquid to idols of Shiva, Ganesha and Durga in northern Uttar Pradesh state. But others dismissed the milk-slurping gods as the work of less miraculous forces - surface tension, which pulls the liquid toward the statues and capillary action, through which the milk is leached into the statues by tiny pores on the surface of the stone.
"Milk disappears the same way water reaches the top of a tree through roots," said A K Sharma, a professor at Lucknow University.
As the word spread through television reports, crowds swarmed temples in dozens of cities, just as millions did during a similar episode in 1995, when authorities were forced to deploy extra police to control crowds. Some parts of the country also faced a milk shortage.
"Many people in India straddle two different worlds - one world of scientific education and high-tech jobs versus another steeped in their centuries-old beliefs in supernatural phenomena," said Abhilasha Kumari, a sociologist at Jamia Milia Islamia university in New Delhi. The drinking gods craze came after thousands of Muslims flocked to a bay in Mumbai late on Friday and early Saturday to drink "sweet water" - ordinarily brackish water that was noticeably less salty than usual.
Scientists said recent heavy rains had lowered the salinity of the water, and officials urged people not to drink from Mahim Bay where the water is reportedly contaminated by raw sewage and industrial waste.
