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EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE
NEW DELHI, February 22: After Lord Ganesha, it is Lord Shiva's turn to make his presence felt. Following the incident in which Ganesha idols all over the country began drinking milk in 1996, it is now Shivlings that are changing colour.
In West Delhi's Bali Nagar, head pujari of the Sanatan Dharma temple, Harinath Shastri, was woken-up with a phone-call at midnight. ``There has been a miracle. The Lord is appearing in the Shivling,'' said the excited caller, whose daughter, based in Agra, had witnessed something similar there. ``Have you checked the Shivling in your temple?'' he asked.
By then, another devotee came to the temple requesting Shastriji to open the doors of the Shiva temple so that she see the lord for herself. When the pujari opened the door, he claims he found a thin white line on the otherwise black Shivling. ``By this morning, it had become even more prominent after the bhajans and kirtans had been completed and we lifted the flower garlands from the Shivling,'' said Shastri. In the nearby Durga Temple in Ramesh Nagar , a big red spot in the shape of an eye which has appeared on the Shivling. ``There was nothing before 12 p.m. in the afternoon. Suddenly, this spot was noticed,'' said Yograj Bagga, store-keeper of the temple. Serpentine queues were seen inside the temple premises as hysterical devotees lined-up. ``Yeh sakshat prabhu prakat huen hain (This is the Lord himself who has appeared),'' said a devotee. The temple committee members were seen installing lights to prepare for the massive crowd which swelled as evening progressed. Ropes were tied to divide thecrowd into orderly queues.``All the other statues have also assumed a bluish tinge. Earlier they were all marble white,'' said Bagga.
In another Sanatan Dharma Mandir in Ramesh Nagar, devotees organised bhajans and singing sessions to celebrate what they termed ``the arrival of the Lord''. A few children joined in by dancing to the cymbals, drums and singing.
There were those who were slightly sceptical, still undecided, about whether to accept the happenings as a miracle. ``Sometimes we feel like believing it, but we are not sure,'' said Kanti Bai, a resident of Rajouri Gardens, who had come there with her daughter to witness the incident. ``If it is really a miracle, it should happen everywhere. The Shivling in my house is perfectly fine,'' she added. Just then, another pujari from the same temple came and displayed his one-inch Shivling which had white spots on both the sides. ``Till today morning, it was jet black, now suddenly these spots have appeared,'' he said.
Interestingly, the three temples which claim to be host to this `paranormal phenomenon' are within a radius of two kilometres. When Express Newsline contacted the scientific community at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), one of the professors from the Chemistry department said that he was not in a position to comment without making a thorough observation of the local conditions. Offering probable explanations, however, he said that there is a possibility that the stones contain iron, which gets oxidised when coming in contact with water and forms ferric oxide, leaving a red mark. The white colour could be due to the presence of marble, he said.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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This story was printed from Net Express located at http://www.expressindia.com. Net Express provides a portal to India, with news from The Indian Express and The Financial Express along with sites on travel and tourism, the entertainment industry, the power sector, the environment and much more.
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