INDIANAPOLIS – Through this mad blizzard of confetti, we can see the truth now. The confetti gushes from the blowers, whirling up into the high iron of the house Eli Manning’s brother built, red-and-blue Giants snow shimmering almost pinkish in the lights.

But you know what?

It obscures nothing, this champion’s curtain.

It cannot, it will not, because the truth is a Day-Glo shout, and it says that Eli Manning is not nor ever will be Peyton Manning; their paths and their legacies have diverged forever now. Peyton is the man who owns the record book (and an entire city, in a way his brother never will). Eli owns the postseason.

If his name did not already belong in the same breath with Joe Montana or, yes, Tom Brady, as a playoff monster, it does now, after Sunday night. Once again the whole thing, on the biggest stage, came to rest on his shoulders, and once again he bore the weight like a feather.

With the Giants down 17-15 and the clock sliding away from them, Manning did what he does, which is find that particular zone of cool that has come to personify him and ride it for all it was worth. From his own 12, with 3:46 left, he took his team 88 yards in nine plays, dropping a 38-yard strike over two defenders to Mario Manningham right off the jump, completing 5-of-6 passes in all on the drive.

Finally Ahmad Bradshaw galloped unscathed into the end zone through the Arc de Triomphe of holes, and Super Bowl XLVI had its final score: Giants 21, Patriots 17.

And Eli had a legacy to call his own.

Only the fifth player all time to win multiple Super Bowl MVPs. Only the 11th quarterback to start and win multiple Super Bowls. Only quarterback ever to outduel perhaps the greatest quarterback of them all, Tom Brady, both times they faced in a Super Bowl.

And this night, even more than 2008, is the one we’ll remember, if only because Manning and Brady played Super Bowl XLVI at such an extraordinarily high level. Through three quarters, they were a combined 41-of-52 passing for 390 yards and three touchdowns; by the end, Brady was 27-of-41 for 276 yards and two touchdowns, completing a record 16 passes in a row at one point, and Manning was 30 of 40 for 296 and one score.

And again it was Manning who won. Again it was Manning who raised the Vince Lombardi Trophy down there amid the confetti, looked at it for a long second, raised it again.

“Wild game,” he said. “Wild offseason,. Guys never quit; we’re proud of our team, the way we dealt with things all season.”

And winning in his brother’s house, his brother’s town?

“You know, it just feels good to win the Super Bowl,” he replied. “It doesn’t matter where you are.”

Or how you got there.

You can say, after all, and you’d be right, that this one belonged as much to others as to Manning. It belonged to Bradshaw, who ran for 72 yards and kept the clock grinding and the ball out of Brady’s hands for better than 37 minutes. It belonged to a defense that didn’t allow Brady and Co. a point after the 11:20 mark of the third quarter.

It belonged to Hakeem Nicks and his 10 receptions for 109 yards, and to Manningham and his five catches for 73 yards.

Mostly, though, it belonged to Manning – who set a Super Bowl record by completing his first nine passes, and who beat a three-time Super Bowl champion at the top of his game, and who’s won eight of his last nine postseason starts. And who is, on top of that, is the Giants postseason leader in attempts (356), completions (219), yards (2,516) and came within four yards Sunday of going over 300 yards in his last three playoff games.

“I don’t know anything about the Hall of Fame,” said his dad, Archie, when asked about the possibility of having two Hall of Fame quarterbacks in the family. “Eli is in his eighth year, and I know one thing. He might have said earlier in the year that he belonged with the elite quarterbacks. He will not be saying that he belongs in the Hall of Fame.”

No one else might, either, at the moment.

But they will, down the road. And sooner rather than later.

Especially now. Especially after Sunday.