The crowd in front of the temple swelled in ways only a temple crowd could swell. Hundreds of sweaty men jostled with each other grumbling and swearing under their breath as their close proximity undid the effects of the centrally air-conditioned complex. But nobody spoke too loudly or made a scene.

The gods were watching.

Sudarshan Chakras -- disk-shaped drones 30 centimetres wide -- hovered and hummed in the air above the crowd of devotees, making sure that order prevailed. A devotee's conduct reflected on his social status, his visibility on the national web, and most importantly, his credit score. The principles of Dharma were sacrosanct, and no single principle was more sacred than the one about the evils of disagreement and conflict. The well-being of the Dharmic Republic depended on it.

The gates opened and the monk on duty stepped out. From the screen strapped to his right hand, he read out the Citizen ID that had been chosen for admission today. "18555," he said and then added, "The chosen one may please step forward for darshan."

As the crowd of disgruntled hopefuls dispersed in an orderly fashion, Citizen number 18555 climbed the temple stairs. As he walked through the gateway, the temple scanned and confirmed his identity. The monk stopped smiling when the results showed up on his screen in a neat little colour-coded table.

"It's my caste, isn't it?" the Citizen said with a tired smile. "Or is it my gender? Or the things I have written? Or where I was born!"

"The gods make their own decisions Citizen," the priest said, referring to the randomised selection process that still somehow always managed to always choose a very specific type of devotee. "Your Karma has brought you here. If the gods wish to see you, they must have their reasons. They don't care if you are a minority, a mlechha, or even a woman..."

The Citizen had stopped listening. It was nothing he hadn't heard before on so many public broadcasts -- sanitised descriptions of the Dharmic Republic repeated so often that a generation had grown up believing that they did actually live in the land of the pure - a Punyabhumi. If he had a rupee for every cityborn merchant who had bought his way into the temple by gaming the system, he wouldn't have to share a hostel room with six smelly college boys. On the other hand, the fact that it was possible to game the temple system was the reason he was here today.

The monk, who apparently was no longer being fed lines from his retinal prompter, grew quiet as the Citizen started walking towards the garbha griha -- the temple's inner chamber -- where chosen devotees met with the gods and spoke to them.

Devotional music from the early thirties started playing as soon as the Citizen stepped through the door. As the door closed behind him and the interior of the forty-by-forty chamber was plunged into complete darkness, an unseen voice began to speak even as invisible sensors measured him up -- height, weight, eye-level -- so the chamber could create the most realistic simulation for him.

"In the beginning," the voice said, "there was only Him. When He became aware of himself and realised that He was alone, He grew afraid. But then He also realised that if He was the only One, He had nothing to fear. So He began to imagine, and out of His imagination came all that there is -- including you."

A star field exploded outwards from under the Citizen's feet, expanding in all directions and for as far as the eye could see. Though he knew that this was a holographic representation of an expanding universe in its earliest days designed to make the small inner chamber appear vast, he held his breath for a moment. When the Darshan system had first been introduced, it was a novelty -- something a rich devotee might buy an hour of and then later talk up among members of his community. It took less than five years for them to become the main reason people went to temples. Glorified recordings with limited interactive features they may have been back then, but they pretty much single-handedly brought absolute power to the Sangh.

The citizen walked forward and the star field reoriented itself with each step he took, keeping him at the centre. The music swelled and before his eyes, the Earth fell into place around the sun, the view zoomed in to show him life getting seeded by the gods, the oceans filling with water after the great flood of Manu, lakhs of years passing in minutes as the four ages of man played out in front of the Citizen. The voice narrated an abridged version of the Dharmic Republic's official Itihasa. Gods incarnated over and over as beasts, monks, and kings who fought holy wars against demons, oppressors, and outsiders. 

Asuras rose to power, laughing maniacally against the backdrop of red skies, only to be slain by avatars. Conquering empires came and were repelled by brave freedom fighters blessed by the gods, Dharma itself came to the verge of extinction. But through the exercise of virtue, heroism, and purity, the nation rose to glory again. The last few minutes had the Citizen looking at a satellite map of the subcontinent floating about in space all by itself, as if the rest of the world didn't exist, just as it didn't exist on the national web. The old man however, had told him stories from before the 30s -- a time when the web was truly worldwide.