Mahakumbh dip at Prayagraj: A confluence of faith, fervour and aspirations
The Kumbh this year is more than a river of faith — crores of people streaming in from all corners of the globe — it is about celebrating what each can do to help themselves.
5 min read
8-year-old Ragini at Maha Kumbh. (Renuka Puri)Around 3.5 crores of devotees descended on the Sangam in Prayagraj on Tuesday to celebrate a rare Maha Kumbh that comes once in 144 years. But this is the story of another confluence, of the extraordinariness of three little girls who have faith in their talent to lift spirits, emotion and hold everybody in thrall like the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna and the mythical Saraswati.
Eight-year-old Ragini Nat has a cough as the wet air blows in thick and heavy from the Sangam but the tiny acrobat still manages to balance herself on a cycle wheel, swaying on the rope from end to end. The money collected by her brothers is meant to pay for her school fees so that she doesn’t become another dropout. “She has always been the best performer among us. So we make sure that she doesn’t get tired. We perform only on special days,” says Ved, one of her brothers.
Fourteen-year-old Vandana Nishad assists her mother Jaya Nishad, a beautician, to sell water cans on mahasnan days at the Kumbh so that she can pursue NEET. “I invested Rs 10,000 on these cans. I have already made 5,000 in two nights,” says Jaya, who is building a corpus for her future.
Meanwhile, nine-year-old Ranu prances around on the sandy riverbanks in a tiny white sari like Ganga incarnate. Having won a fancy dress competition in school, she has been a crowd-puller on special days, the mass adulation helping her parents build reserves for her higher education.
The Kumbh this year is more than a river of faith — seven crore people streaming in from all corners of the globe day and night — it is about celebrating what each can do to help themselves. “Of course, there are the sadhus, their akhadas and asceticism, but the winds are blowing as each human story is about change-making and inclusivity,” says Meenakshi Singh Khatu, 61, former designer at NID Ahmedabad, who has been drawn here by female Naga sadhus and young renunciates. This year, women Naga sadhus have been allowed to take part in the Amrit Snan (also known as Shahi Snan) while most akhadas have committed themselves to appoint sadhvis as senior office-bearers in their monastic order.
Dr Bhaswar Bhakeria, 70, who runs a charitable clinic at Haripura in Surat, has hitched three rides on battery-operated cars, autos and bikes to get to his camp, considering the city has been pedestrianised to make way for a large influx of people. Having never missed a Kumbh but one, he says, “A snan is not about just enlightenment or religiosity or a ritualistic dip. It is about overcoming your individual limitations and willingness to be a part of the commonality of ideas. The Kumbh democratises you. Be it 2 am or 2 pm, the heave of humanity is constant,” he says.
There may be curated luxury in the privileged part of the tent city with SUVs, golf carts and guru talks, but when it’s time to take a dip, Philip Seymour from the US, who is travelling with wife Allison and sons, is at the ghat, sitting on a bed of straws like the others. “There was a time when the Western view was all about exotica and colour. But what struck me was that anybody can qualify to be a monk without much complexity, oath or order. Also you realise you need so little to survive,” he says.
Newlywed, mid-20ish NRI couple Sanjay and Riddhima have draped themselves in saffron robes knotted up in the manner of the sadhus, not just out of faith but because it makes for a cool fashion statement and gives them a reel-worthy moment.
And talking of reels, from age 10 to 80, from a Haryanvi teen to an octogenarian Nepali, everybody manages to frame their wide grin before and after the dip, whirling their panorama shot to compete with the drones above, even if it means dropping and losing cellphones in the process.
Be it the railway station or airport, the city just doesn’t stop moving, an endless padayatra of common desires and absolution. Be it the single traveller, a multi-generational family, a newlywed couple, students, they are all on the road, dragging their fancy trolleys or stacking up their bags and blankets on their heads. Those who do not have accommodation have simply bought recycled plastic sheets between Rs 50 and Rs 100 to lay out on the grass or the underside of a flyover, even shopfronts as a temporary sleeping bag. On why she had chosen a shopfront, Lila Devi from Himachal says, “My husband just couldn’t walk anymore. We did not want to miss the snan, so I found a jugaad.”
The Kumbh organisers had consulted experts from IIT Kanpur and IIT Allahabad to streamline traffic management with AI and machine-learning tools. But all rational assessments fail when the sheer bulk of human traffic far outruns any model to discipline it. But then that’s Kumbh. Where an old woman runs a Mai Ki Rasoi that offers a balanced thali for Rs 9. Or when a shopkeeper gives you a complimentary cup of tea with a Rs 30 water bottle, where vegetable vendors ferry the distraught among the elderly in their carts and a man hands over a Rs 100 note he found at a ghat to a policeman, asking him to feed an orphan. Moksha is earned by more than just a dip.
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