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I am the product of a convent school education: chapel, Our Father, hymns, Midnight Mass on Christmas, holy water… the whole nine yards of it.

For a long time, I thought the Irish and Anglo-Indian nuns who taught us were the most glamourous people on earth. Their strict dress code, and even stricter lifestyles, their secret living quarters, their adherence to what appeared to be a secret order and their inaccessible emotions under their habits made them so alluring, that I swore that when I grew up I would be a nun too.

The fact that I was a Hindu did not seem to matter at that time. When I informed my parents of this decision they smiled and treated it with the same import that they had when I had told them I wanted to be a sculptor — with genial indulgence.

How different those times were. Growing up in an India where caste, communal and religious lines were not so sharply drawn. It was as if we all were constantly bubbling together, in a spicy melting pot, with all our flavours and spices mixing and mashing.

We lived in a two-up, two-down building with Muslim and Christian neighbours, recipients of Eid delicacies and Christmas and Easter feasts. During the Indo-Pak wars we huddled together in the same basement listening to the sirens.

And when there was an earthquake, we hid together under the stairs.Which is why the happenings at Loreto Lucknow seem curiouser and curiouser. Childhood is a time for rumour and high drama — and there is no animal more excitable or hysterical than a bunch of school girls (except perhaps a bunch of parents).

That a few girls fainted when a priest claimed to be Jesus is no surprise to me, who had lived through so many hot and fetid school assemblies with bad ventilation, lighting and stampeding girls.

In any case, in a country where every second Hindu guru/godman claims to be a reincarnation of a god is it such a shocking thing to have a priest claim he is Christ?

I have interviewed at least half a dozen godmen, who have made similar or more grandiose claims. In a milieu where the supernatural exists cheek by jowl with the ordinary, I do not think such an event would have past any muster unless it was politically motivated.

So here’s the rub: narrow minded Hindu mob pounces upon the incident to bash in a few doors and flower pots but not before informing TV channels who capture the moment for posterity.

Then schools are closed, political parties get in on the act, a national debate ensues, and every one starts worrying about conversions and evangelism.

What a different age we live in. If this had happened when we were at school, if we had come home one day and said that we’d met a man who said he was Jesus Christ, our parents would have said, “Wow! Did you get his autograph?”

s_malavika @dnaindia.net