It's a small stall along a narrow lane, but Jubaida's smile is as big as it can get. Nothing, this 55-year-old believes, can give her greater satisfaction than sitting here, doing business in the name of Ram. From heaps of sindoor, sandalwood and turmeric to bright packets of incense sticks, striking portraits of Hindu deities and bhajan equipment, she has on offer everything those who visit the shrine may want to pick up. Having come to Ayodhya as a 15-year-old bride, she has been at it ever since her father-in-law gifted the shop to her.

	DIVINE GIFTS: Jubaida's family sells temple accessories on the road to the Ram shrine

Like her, there are around two dozen Muslim families who have stalls on the congested track leading to the temple. And like her, they too make a living by running shops that sell mandir material. They are as much at peace with what they do as their Hindu customers and even at the worst of times, like December 1992 when the Babri Masjid was razed to the ground and the town became a communal cauldron, they were unaffected. In fact, in the fortnight that followed, the mahant of Hanuman Garhi, which is close to the main temple site, gave shelter to many Muslims, including Jubaida and her family. Not just that, the mahants ensured that their shops remained untouched in the mayhem. "My stall was never attacked or looted during the troubled times," confirms Noor Alam, who runs a bangle shop. It was the same story with his father who sells sweets and puja material a few yards away.

If this handful of Hindus and Muslims live in harmony in the unlikeliest of locales, it is because they know no other way. It's a tradition that has persisted for over a century now despite all odds. Significantly, most of the Muslims running the stalls don't own them. They are the properties of Hindus. In the early 1900s influential mahants began letting out their shops to trustworthy Muslims for monthly rents ranging between Rs 10 to Rs 40. The practice has continued to date with the rents increasing just marginally. Jubaida, for instance, pays Rs 200 a year.

What drives the live-and-let-live culture is difficult to explain. It is perhaps the unstated sense of peace that it brings. Neither the Muslim shopkeepers nor the Hindu mahants supporting them are party to the raging dispute over the Ram temple. It's only the "bade netas", they will tell you, who seem to have time for such matters.

"Why waste our energies taking part in the controversy?" asks Munna, who sells sweets and temple material on the same lane. It's not that Munna and the others are not conscious of the sensitivity of the Ayodhya issue. They admit they are a minority in the area but the question of a confrontation with the majority Hindus has never arisen for them all these years. "The mahants are very compassionate and are always there for us, especially when someone in our family falls sick," says Munna.

The mahants have never come in the way of even Mohammad Hashim, a 75-year-old who has been a litigant in the dispute since 1947. The grey haired man lives in a small house with a trademark cycle in the area and says that nothing has ever made him feel insecure. Not even his inflammatory statements. This may be a paradox but one that's best left unchanged.