It's a mystery that continues to leave Indians -- whether they be small investors or big brokers; finance analysts or finance ministers; whether they be rich, not-so-rich or the wannabe rich absolutely breathless.

Manmohan Singh built his credibility on it and every finance minister after him has been courting it assiduously. And yes, lest it be forgotten, Harshad Mehta made his fortune using it.

It's not just Bollywood that has bestowed the name swapnanagari, or dream city, on Mumbai. After all millions of dreams have also flowered on the modest pavements of Dalal Street, which is to India what Wall Street is to the richest nation in the world.

The concave Bombay Stock Exchange building, that rises from Dalal Street and seems to stretch right up to the heavens, has become an icon for the city, as synonymous with Mumbai as the Gateway ofIndia or the Victoria Terminus.

And every day, as fortunes are made -- like the batata pav that vendors sell in the vicinity the legend of Dalal Street gets another lease of life. But then life can never be one happy ride and the true Dalal Street investor knows this truth more than most others. For every bull, there is a bear, for every millionaire, there are a hundred paupers. Life is tough.

Take it or leave it. It's this uncertainty that makes people dealing here a very superstitious tribe indeed.

Last week, they were left gazing at the skies, as the red line achieved height after rarefied height. Every peak was captured with great gusto right from 4,000 to 4,500. The final assault came on Tuesday: 4,645, which had fallen to the bears on September 12, 1994 and had never been achieved since. On Wednesday, the bulls butted their way to 4,710 and history was made on Dalal Street.

It even prompted finance minister Yashwant Sinha, not given to hyperbole, to exclaim on Thursday, ``Sensex hasscaled the Kargil peak.'' His statement drew a thunderous round of applause from the audience that had gathered at the Rotunda of PJ Towers, on Dalal Street.

So who gets the accolades? Should the champagne bottles be popped? Why not? After all, the general refrain that is heard these days is that ``the economy is reviving and the fundamentals are strong''.

But isn't the match fixed? Isn't there a foreign hand in it? Don't you see intruders here, the dreaded ghuspaithiyaan (FIIs or foreign institutional investors as the jargon goes) in large numbers? True, these ghuspaithiyaans are quite a different breed to the ones who came uninvited into Kargil. Yet the local warriors, otherwise known as the Dalal street brokers, did not want to lose the battle to them. They took positions, both long and short, fired from all their cylinders, scored more and more points and, at the end of the week, they did the badla on them, took their revenge. And, somewhere in the western sector, the grounded US-64 wasreactivated. The pilot has refuelled it, but he will take off only if the Sensex provides a launch-pad of 5,000 points above sea level.

But why this game of revenge when you have allowed them to come in the first place? But didn't they take advantage of us when the BJP government fell? Didn't they occupy the peaks when we paused? Now it is our time to strike back, or that seems to be the reigning sentiment on Dalal Street these days.

Yes it is a war which does not make any sense. But that is what the Sense-ex is all about you can only make sense of the whole phenomenon after the act is done and recorded. No wonder our finance ministers are not known to sleep well at night. It's a game where you can be certain that everything is uncertain. The moment you think things are under your control, you discover that you are standing on quicksand.

Look what happened when the BJP government fell. The general perception was that the political uncertainty would result in the bears ruling the roost. But it was atthat point that the foreign institutional investors stormed in -- in large numbers -- and caught the local brokers completely off-guard.

It recalled another moment, over a year ago. When India went nuclear on May 11, 1998, and the nation went into a jingoistic delirium over its newly acquired security blanket, the Sensex did not join in the celebrations. It dived responding not to that particular moment but to the future when the threat of sanctions from the United States, India's single largest trading party, could become a very real possibility.

The conundrum does not end here. Whether in war or in peace, the contradictions are constantly surfacing. After Sinha's second budget this year everything is affordable except shares. It was the reverse after his first budget then even onions gave us tears and the only affordable thing at that time was an equity share. No one bought then. Everyone wants to buy now, but unfortunately they are out of reach!

Sinha made his second visit to the Bombay StockExchange last Thursday, this time as the finance minister, taking credit for that all-pervading feel-good factor. He is no mood to roll back this one. But, as he himself reminded us, his earlier visit to the exchange was as a member of the joint parliamentary committee probing the scam.

So what, ultimately, does the Sensex reflect? Is it an indicator of the economy? Well, perhaps. But it also reflects basic human nature: follow the crowd sell when everyone sells; buy when every one buys. The result is that it is a zero sum game. Heads I win, tails you lose.