This snippet appeared in the Mumbai edition of The Times of India dated August 29, 2011. Goes to show how quick and easy it is to access fax and it was God’s way of answering his devotee’s prayer VIA FAX.
Faith and diamonds
In just 11 years, Rama Shah, a Jain housewife from Sion, has created more than 1.5 lakh Ganesha idols, several of them with her eyes closed. Shah, a staunch devotee who boasts numerous national and international records for her talent, says her undying faith in Ganesha has helped several. Only recently, said Shah, it came to the rescue of a Gujarati businessman who had 13 packets full of diamonds with him.
He was on his way from Gujarat to Mumbai and was accosted by cops in Bandra during a nakabandi. They arrested him as he did not have a valid bill for the diamonds. A local diamond trader known to the businessman then phoned Shah, who is also a mohalla committee member, and sought her help, insisting that his acquaintance was innocent.
She immediately rushed to the police station where the businessman had been detained for more than 24 hours by now. Though they welcomed her, the cop said he would not be able to release the businessman unless relevant documents were produced. She nodded, stepped out and muttered a quick prayer to her favourite elephant-headed God. In what she calls a stroke of divine intervention, she saw a faxing shop. She decided to call up the shop in Gujarat, from where the diamond trader had made the purchases, and asked them to fax their records for the day. On receiving the document, which proved the businessman’s innocence, the cops released him. The man was deeply overwhelmed and wanted to reward the cops. But Shah, who recently made an idol dedicated to Anna Hazare, insisted that it would not be right to give them cash. “Since he wanted to express his gratitude in some way, I asked him to give them a diamond instead,” says Shah.