Unsure of the outcome of a key business engagement, I hear the wife of an Indian business tycoon employs a rather unique way to appease the Gods, hoping that they would swing a decision/victory in her favour, as a result. The morning before each big day, I'm told, calling her glorified driver over, which in the case of crazy, rich Indians, would mean the pilot of the personal aircraft, she begins an actual parikrama of the 'char dhams' (four abodes) — hovering her plane over the holiest Hindu temple sites across the four corners of India: Badrinath, Puri, Dwarka, Rameswaram.

While the aircraft is positioned right over the temple, she performs a havan (sacred ritual), sitting on the plane's aisle (or the lobby, as it were), with priests humming in unison. She's back home by evening. Mostly, the Gods are happy; going by the results the next day. This deeply transactional relationship with religion isn't particular to rich Indians alone. But, as narrated in James Crabtree's book, The Billionaire Raj, the bit about Vijay Mallya, the 'king of good times', having each new plane from his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, fly over Tirupati, gliding close enough to the Venkateswara Temple to be blessed by priests standing on the tarmac, is just the sort of flight of imagination that makes India's billionaires quite out-of-the-world, I guess. Mallya's love for spirits and spirituality in equally high measure is well known.