Cauvery Basin: The healing powers of Velanganni village

In the Bay of Bengal, towards the base of the Cauvery Delta, is the small village of Velanganni which is famed for its healing powers. In the 16th century it became known as the place where the Virgin Mary miraculously appeared to two small boys instructing them to ask for a chapel to be built. The Roman Catholic basilica, raised to this status by the Pope in 1962, has been renovated and extended many times and is now a large neo gothic building that seemed, when I arrived, to shine out from its whitewashed steeples and buttresses. Stalls nearby sold images of Our Lady of Good Health and small silver replicas of parts of the body visiting pilgrims might want cured as well as simply objects they might want like a house, car,or baby. I decided a house would be useful, thereby escaping my mad landlady.The church was light and airy and the crowned Virgin seemed so benevolent in blue, holding baby Jesus at her side, as I posted my little house into the box at the altar.

The best of the talismans, specially made by jewellers, are kept in a museum opposite. Rows of cases display, along with letters of thanks and photos; hearts modelled straight from an anatomy book, three-dimensional houses, mini coconut fields and lots of stethoscopes. The moving ones were the proud mothers cradling their new born babies, which they had waited so long for. Room after room of these talismans and I began to really believe there would be a nice little house waiting for me when I got home.