WITH a mere circling wave of His Hand, Sai Baba could make objects materialise out of the air. Gold rings, amulets and necklaces; blocks of sugar candy; images of Shiva made of topaz and sapphire; bottles of tonic and packets of blue pills; rosaries, silver vessels and even medallions inscribed with the name of the recipient, the day and date. He could produce vibhuti too, holy Ash that poured from under His fingernails. On average a pound a day flowed from Him as He gave darshan, allowing His followers a sight of God as He moved among them, a tiny ochre-robed figure with an immense black afro, or halo, of hair. The Ash might be salty or sweet, blackish or white. Smeared on the body, it forgave sins; taken in water, it helped digestive complaints.

Sceptics were always trying to show how it was done, saying that the Ash was a pellet crushed between His fingers, or that the gold and silver ellipsoidal lingams (the Form of the Formless) that He coughed up at certain festivals were in fact hidden in His handkerchief. The BBC made a documentary, and slow-motion videos were all over YouTube. Sai Baba laughed at their efforts. His miracles were as trivial, in comparison with His Reality, as a mosquito to an elephant. But at least 6m people, probably closer to 100m, in 126 countries of the world, accepted them as tokens of the Divinity He personified. And He was defended by figures no less than Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India, and Sonia Gandhi, leader of the Congress party, who journeyed to pay their respects before his state funeral.

Besides, he said, all the enquiries and science in the world could not begin to explain the other things that He, as an avatar of God, could will to happen. He could raise people from the dead, even when ants were already crawling over them. He could hold back the rains. He could leave His own body, letting it slump stiff and lifeless in His chair for five minutes while He travelled to the Kashmir Front or the seashore at Mumbai. Sufferers from duodenal ulcers would find Him operating on them, materialising the instruments from thin air. He could change water into petrol or diesel on which cars ran for many miles.

A number of more straightforward good works could also be attributed to Him. At remote Puttaparthi in Andhra Pradesh, His birthplace and the site since 1948 of His ashram, He established an airport, two sports stadiums, a free super-speciality hospital and an institute of higher learning rated A++ by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council. He set up free primary and secondary schools all over India, had another free hospital built at Bangalore, and paid for drinking water to be piped from the Krishna river to Chennai and from the Godavari river to upland Andhra Pradesh. Perhaps 2m people benefited. This helped to muffle, though never to quiet entirely, controversies about His $5 billion trust fund and claims of sexual abuse of His boy disciples.

The cobra and the scorpion

But then there had always been people who had refused to believe in His Godhead—from His father, who in the beginning beat Him with a stick and made a village healer lacerate His scalp and rub it with garlic and lime juice to cure His madness, to the rationalist who sued Him in 1986 under the Gold Control Act for bringing so many gold articles out of the air. (The case was dismissed.) They ignored the obvious signs of His divinity, such as the cobra that had cradled Him at birth, or His ability as a schoolboy to bring forth peppermints out of an empty bag. He mostly hid His Godhead in those years, but found it frustrating, and was glad at 14 to be able to reveal (after a scorpion sting had put Him into a trance) that His previous body had been that of a 19th-century saint called Shirdi Sai Baba, whose statue, in marble, He placed beside His own in His Temples, and whose fresh photograph, in several copies, He would often produce out of the sands of the Chitravathi river.

As a boy He demanded to be worshipped on Thursdays; as a man He enforced no particular rites or rituals, save the chanting of Om and the names of God. (He Himself had 108 names, and this was the number of crystals formed by His steps on the shore, and the number of pearls on the garland that was once presented to Him by the sea.) He endorsed no particular religion, though He used the terms of Hinduism, embracing all faiths as valid ways to truth, love and peace. He ignored distinctions of race or caste, and was happy to eat rice from an aluminium plate in the house of an untouchable. If His teachings had any flavour, it came from His background among poor farming folk. The hearts of His devotees were dry, He said, like a village tank before the monsoon; they had to be ploughed by the mind, watered by prayer, sown with seeds of Love.

The devotees who crowded the Puttaparthi ashram, hoping for Blessing or stuffing their letters of petition into His hands, never questioned who He was. He was all the multiple forms of God in human shape. Though His forecast that he would die in 2020 was a little out, that did not dent the belief that He would return in a new body to carry on His work. And Sai Baba, patting them on the back, had always told them they were God also. All they needed was, like Him, to know it.