While the logical and the illogical in the world may have been entangled in a battle of rationale, the seekers dipped in the ocean of eternity. An act of submission. A display of acceptance. A spectacle of balance. Faith got fifty crore people to the holy city of Prayagraj, the city that boasts of the confluence of river Ganga, river Yamuna and the mythical river Saraswati.
Mahakumbh 2025 is not for the weak hearted. It is not for those who pursue spirituality through the comforts of the physical dimension, but it is for those who have the divine blessings and wisdom to choose elixir over poison.
It doesn’t happen every day that fourteen people, residents from different parts of India, merge like the three rivers to embark on a spiritual sojourn. None of the devotees in that tempo traveller had ever met or interacted earlier in their lifetimes. It seemed as if divinity had set Prayagraj as the stage for these anonymous characters and was shepherding them throughout the thirty five hours of road travel from New Delhi.
Wasn’t this small group merely a subset of what was lying ahead?
Highways were jammed. Travellers were stranded. Nights were as alive as the days. Public utilities on the highway had crumbled. But the devotion was relentless, not blind. The closer we got to the city limits the more the crowds swelled up. The administration was authorised to put barricades up at the sight of any upsurge. This way the ever increasing traffic of pedestrians moving towards the ghats could be maneuvered and directed through a different road. At a similar point, our driver asked us to disembark and we had to take the foot route.
Fourteen strangers walking, threading their way through a massive and dense population of Indians indicated the invisible bond we shared amongst each other. Old men and women, mothers and their children, friends and their neighbours, rich and poor, VVIPs and hoi polloi, families and their relatives; this comprised one-third of India’s population at Prayagraj. People from remote villages, farthest of lands, the back and beyond of the Indian subcontinent, foreigners and global celebrities, international dignitaries and famous personalities were at the Triveni city. Was it faith, or fear?
Or was it rebooting the karmic meter?
The beauty in this chaos is our Dharma. It is porous. It has no limits to acceptance. It welcomes all, without any distinction, judgement or bias. Our Dharma like Triveni blends people of good and bad virtues. In the process of constant intermingling and confrontations, virtues are equalized and harmony in the human race is ordained. This is the kind of churning, robust, which has been accepting, evolving and metamorphosing since infinite time.
Our scriptures tell us about Samudra Manthan and the conflict between the Devas and the Asuras, for Amrita from the ocean of milk. The coming together of countless people at Mahakumbh is not a tug of war between good or evil. It is the churning of devotees from all faiths and beliefs, sects and class. Ghats have turned into boardrooms; mulling and discussing ways to obtain the fountain of eternal and absolute happiness.
After many hours of walking, hitchhiking on a hand-held cart, cycle cart, e-rickshaw, nishkam bikers, cycle rickshaw and checking with uniformed officials, we landed at the Triveni Sangam Ghat. On our way towards the sangam, many of the group mates were lost and found multiple times in the crowd. The famous Hindi movie dialogue, ‘Khumb meh bichde hue log’, made sense to us now. Looking for them was like looking for a needle in a haystack. They had camouflaged and seamlessly merged with the crowd. The roads were packed with bobbing heads and thumping hearts. They flowed like a river of faith, with smooth and steady bends. Coming back to the issue at hand, there had to be a solution for the people getting lost. Social media reels came to the rescue, and soon all members were holding on to a string of dupatta to ensure that everyone walked together and stayed together.
Ghats were hugely overwhelming. Devotees were close enough to rest their chins on the shoulders of other devotees. A possible stampede was around the corner. Amidst all this a twenty-year old lady from Samastipur in Bihar, lands her one and half month old child in the hands of her husband for the holy dip. Faith and fervour can go hand in hand. For an outsider this may appear like a tsunami of the human race. Chaotic. Noisy. Unlettered. Sylvan. But for us, there was an order to the mess. There was a melody in the pandemonium. There was a green path which was laid out for believers. As we walked a few steps after taking a dip, a young vendor selling rudrakshas flashed, ‘India is not for beginners’ on his makeshift board. It truly made sense.
We walked out with renewed energy. As if the weight of our sins was absorbed by the holy rivers and they rebirthed us with transcendental spiritual life. Walking out of the Kumbh mela was a breeze now, but not without intermittent announcements of lost and found people. Missing devotee, Beauty Pathak’s name was reverberating through the entire length and breadth of the mela.
I am grateful that I could witness this momentous event in the history of mankind. What an extraordinary tale of 45 days that helped so many drifted souls renew their vows spiritually!
Avanti holds a post graduate degree in management. She started her professional career with CitiFinancial and then moved to teaching management students at Rai Foundation. A mother to two wonderful children, she steals whatever little time she can from the everyday household errands, and writes. Her latest book titled Ancient and Lost Temples of Kashmir, is a narration of the ruined and desolate temples of Kashmir. Through this work Avanti wishes to bring the focus on the cultural and historic loss of the ancient history of Kashmir.
Avanti has been a part of various anthologies titled, Crossed and Knotted, Defiant Dreams, When They Spoke and The Readomania book of Mythology. Her opinion pieces are published on various online and offline platforms like, “Daily Excelsior”, “Women’s Web”, “Madras Courier”, and “Early Times”. She is a fellow at ‘The Way of Writing with Natalie Goldberg”.
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