A long look was exchanged between the two women. Complete trust, complete gratitude, complete harmony that can only be conveyed in a silence. Rajjo looked straight into the camera as she spoke to each and every one of her followers out there.

‘As you keep me so do I remain.’ There was a long pause. Devi mesmerized by Rajjo’s beauty continued to capture her. Devi herself wore an identical red sari with a gold border. Dressed like a mirror image of her mistress, she wanted to invite Rajjo’s fate upon her.

Kesar, hesitant and wide-eyed, stood there looking at the two women, not daring to breathe.

Devi pressed the record button and handed it to him. Kesar just stood there watching Rajjo talk through the camera, arrested by her gaze. Rajjo’s warm smile passed through him, assuring him of better days when the mangoes ripened in the summer on the tree behind their house. She had reached out for him at this hour of need. He was ready to give his life. But for now Kesar was shivering and it was important he kept his hand steady even though his heart was in his mouth.

He focused on the words coming out of Rajjo’s mouth. She was a goddess talking to her devotees in her enigmatic voice, her body bathed in oil, her flaming crimson sari draped around her, glistening like a snakeskin. She looked surreal as she spoke into the camera, talking to each and every one of the millions who were watching this video.

‘On cold winter nights in our village, my mother would sit by the fire in our courtyard, with me and my siblings sitting around her. If we’d have a tough day she would close the holy book and then open it again, her eyes shut in faith and prayer her finger would hover on the pages, looking for an answer and would stop at a verse. She would read that aloud to us, and that was the message that carried salvation for us that day. One cold night she read this verse out to us and I think I saved it for this day.’ Rajjo stared at the camera once again and as if in a trance, repeated the lines. Every word clung to her memory and glided effortlessly from her tongue:

‘The pandits recite the Vedas, the householders assert their faith in family life. The naked renunciates, the wearers of patched coats, the magicians, those who remain always awake, and those who bathe at the holy places of pilgrimage. The ascetics, the hermits, the sanyasis and those who are wise in their own mind: all say they have found the lord but he alone is a devotee, whom the lord has united with Himself !’