Fascinating Stories
Calling Bhairon Baba—to your doorsteps!
Bhairon Baba is a well-known deity in India. There are Bhairon Baba temples, where the deity grants boons to his devotees. Here is a miracle that can help you bring the deity right into your home. What is alluring about this miracle is that, if Bhairo Baba could be called in this way, why not the other deities, gods and goddesses, saints and prophets as well?
A few years back I was conducting a workshop on science behind miracles in the town of Lambgaon, high up in the Himalayas near Uttarkashi. A student asked me how does a Sadhu (Monk) invert a tumbler full of water on a sieve without a drop falling to the ground?
Actually this is what happens. Sadhus routinely go to collect alms after 10 o’clock in the morning, because by then the children have gone to school and the men folk have gone to their jobs: only the housewives, highly vulnerable and oblivious to the ways of the world, remain at home. When a Sadhu nocks at the door, a housewife tired and harassed after the morning shores, opens the door. He in his own authoritative way points to her tired looks and promises to make her free from all worries (Chinta-mukt). “Just go in and bring a glass tumbler, a sieve and a bucket half-filled with water, and I shall call Bhairon Baba right here to solve all your problems.”
The housewife does as told. The Sadhu first pours a glass of water over the sieve to show that the water flows out uninterrupted. He then holds a glass of water in his left hand, puts the sieve up side down over the rim of the glass, places his right palm over the rim (visible through the sieve), and swiftly turns the whole thing upside down. He then holds the sieve with his left hand and removes his right-hand palm from below. The housewife is surprised to see that not a drop of water falls to the ground through the sieve. The Sadhu assures the housewife that the water doesn’t fall because Bhairon Baba is now established (‘Brajman hein’) inside the glass.
He now implores the housewife to ask for whatever boon she wants to be fulfilled. Who doesn’t have problems in this world—the housewife also has many—and she starts to beseech Bhairon Baba to solve them: “…my son may pass his exam with flying colors; my daughter may get engaged to a well-to-do groom; my husband may win the court case” and so on.
After she has placed all her problems before Bhairon Baba, the Sadhu rotates the glass in such a manner that air enters the glass and the water drops down all at once. The Sadhu informs the housewife that Bhairon Baba has granted all her wishes and departed, and to please pay him up (a specified sum) or else! The housewife quickly pays up and the Sadhu goes in search of the next victim.
When I returned to Delhi the first thing I did was to perform the miracle myself—and it worked; that is, I was able stand a glass full of water upside down on the sieve, without a drop of water falling to the ground. Although I was not able to explain the miracle then and there, in Lambgaon, I traced its lineage to an innocuous scientific experiment that the students of class-IX routinely perform: They take a glass of water in the left hand, cover its rim with a piece of card paper, press the paper with the right-hand palm, and swiftly turn the glass upside down. Now they carefully remove the right-hand palm from below. The card paper holds in place and keeps the water body in the glass effectively blocked!
Normally the teacher explains that since the air pressure all around the glass as well as inside it is the same the card paper holds in place. But there is another scientific principle involved here—that of surface tension, which is nothing but a molecular film formed at the interface between the water surface and air. It is surface tension that keeps the card paper firmly sealed (air-tight) to the rim of the glass.
There is another scientific experiment you can perform using the phenomena of air pressure and surface tension. Ask two persons to stretch a handkerchief over a bucket and pour a glass of water over it. The water would pass through the fabric uninterrupted, obviously. Now fill the glass with water once again, cover its rim with the handkerchief, hold the tightly stretched corners of the fabric at the bottom of the glass, place your right-hand palm on the glass rim, and swiftly turn the glass up-side down. Now, remove your right-hand palm from below. You would be surprised to see that the same fabric that allowed the water to flow out uninterrupted a while ago now keeps the water in the glass effectively blocked. Why? Because the surface tension of water blocks all the holes in the fabric forming an airtight sheet which doesn’t allow water to flow out through the fabric.
This is exactly what happens when a glass full of water is made to stand upside down over a sieve: the surface tension forms an airtight sheet with the sieve that effectively blocks the water in the glass! In fact you can actually see the surface tension of water in action if you dip the whole sieve in the water and hold it in front of you.
After a couple of months the same miracle had traveled to Delhi, and perhaps other parts of north India, but with a subtle difference. Here the Sadhu would make the housewife to pay up after each wish: say, Rs 50/- for the son passing the exam; Rs 150/- for the engagement of the daughter; and Rs 300/- for winning the court case. There is a tradition that one cannot take back the offerings made to a deity. So, after the deity is gone the Sadhu coolly pockets the offerings—so no haggling, you see.
-- Badiuddin Khan
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