Asia | Pilgrims’ pleas

What a church in Mumbai reveals about Indians’ desires

As the country grows richer, its people dream bigger

MUMBAI, INDIA - SEPTEMBER 18, 2011: Devotees try to reach the cross outside Mount Mary Church on the last day of Bandra Fair on Sunday. (Photo by Sattish Bate/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)
|BANDRA

THE SUPPLICANT enters the Basilica of Our Lady of the Mount and walks to the sanctuary. On the floor, far below the feet of the golden-robed Madonna and the baby Jesus, he finds a row of blue plastic boxes. In one of them he carefully places a small piece of wax shaped to look like a pair of human lungs. Stepping back he bows his head, joins his hands and utters a silent prayer.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “What Indians pray for”

The world China wants

From the October 15th 2022 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

Tsubasa Ito teaches his son Koya how to play baseball in Nagoya City, Japan

Fathers are doing more child care in East Asia

About time, too

A Saiga antelope walks on a prairie outside Almaty, Kazakhstan

Ice Age antelopes surge back from the brink of extinction

Even better, these peers of sabre-toothed tigers can help with carbon capture


An illustration of a man in a suit (Prabowo Subianto) with four speech bubbles of barying sizes that read: "SIR!".

Indonesia’s Prabowo is desperate to impress Trump and Xi

The new president’s first foreign tour was a shambles


Is India’s education system the root of its problems?

A recent comparison with China suggests that may be so

Meet the outspoken maverick who could lead India

Nitin Gadkari, India’s highways minister, talks to The Economist

The Adani scandal takes the shine off Modi’s electoral success

The tycoon’s indictment clouds the prime minister’s prospects