Toilet Bowl of the Gods

'Miracle' Creek Draws Thousands

from Observer

Thousands of Indians drank from a polluted Arabian Sea creek after claims that its water had miraculously turned sweet and could cure illnesses, police said yesterday.

About 5,000 people gathered at the creek in Mumbai overnight, many of them drinking the dirty water from their palms.

'Sweet seawater, this is a miracle. This water is divine,' Sheikh Naseer, a Mumbai man told a local TV news channel.

Children and adults bathed in the creek, which receives thousands of tonnes of sewage and industrial waste every day. Some scooped up seawater in bottles and plastic bags, saying they were going to share it with their families. 'There has been a mad rush to the creek. There is a dargah [Islamic mausoleum] nearby and people felt this is something divine,' said S Kumar, a police officer.

But police began stopping people from going to the creek yesterday after authorities warned drinking the polluted water was dangerous. Mumbai's civic officials said the water could have temporarily lost its salinity for several reasons, including pollution and inflow of freshwater from a nearby source.

'We have collected a sample of the water and sent it for testing,' a city official said.