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Kumbha
Karma
The festival
of the river is exotica for the West, an enormous story for the media
and a combination of faith and economics for many Indians big and small
By
Ashok Malik in Allahabad
Rs 120
crore: The amount spent by the Uttar Pradesh Government to build roads,
bridges and so on in Kumbhanagar, spread over 1,200 hectares, and the
adjoining Allahabad city.
£1
million (Rs 7 crore): Channel 4's budget for getting a 60-member crew
to and setting up a studio at the Kumbha for daily uplinks to Britain.
It's "30 per cent of the channel's annual outlay for religious programming".
Rs 35:
Daily earnings of Ramke, 19, who left his job as a part-time worker in
a carpet factory in Ghazipur to sell channa bhujiya to pilgrims at the
Kumbha.
Like
anything quintessentially Indian, the Kumbha Mela means different things
to different people. Concourse of humanity, a ritual going back to an
era when Greeks still worshipped Zeus, the Kumbha is also a grand sweep
of Indian civilisation, culture and, to an extent, commerce. Almost by
definition it is a mass phenomenon. A festival that involves 70 million
pilgrims over 44 days can scarcely be described otherwise.
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| MOBILE
REPUBLIC : Sadhus at the Kumbha use cell phones, read English newspapers
and even drink mineral water. In keeping with the media age, the difference
before the camera too is fast disappearing. |
Yet not everybody
who comes to the Kumbha does so with the sole motive of praying to Ma
Ganga and bathing in her, now alas muddied, waters in an act of purification.
The Kumbha is exotica for the West, entertainment for the media and employment,
admittedly seasonal, for literally thousands of people in Allahabad and
beyond.
There were
over 5,000 foreign visitors for the first ritual bath on Paush Purnima,
January 9. The global reach of the Kumbha is evident from the example
of Emorine Martine, a Frenchwoman who has been travelling across Asia
with her teenaged daughter over the past year and a half. Martine first
heard of the Kumbha five months ago, "while I was chatting with an
American friend in Uzbekistan".
About 100
of the western karma trippers were staying at Sangam Dham, the 12 bigha
no-meat, no-alcohol "ashram" built by Cox and Kings for well-heeled
tourists and promising everything from all-night baul soirees to discourses
on Hinduism by Karan Singh to consultations with in-house ayurveda and
astrology specialists. A petition by local sadhus against the "commercialisation
of Kumbha"-they were inspired, the bush telegraph had it, by some
Allahabadi hoteliers-and apprehensions of a "law and order problem"
led to the Kumbhanagar administration sending the travel company an eviction
notice.
When Orit
Segev was first told millions of people gathered at the banks of a great
Indian river she "thought the Kumbha was a rumour". The call
of a culture as old as her native Jerusalem's eventually triumphed over
doubt. Nevertheless, thanks to the blanket media coverage, few will be
left ignorant of the Kumbha. At the Kumbhanagar Media Camp 300 national
and 88 foreign journalists have already sought accreditation. Purists
may have protested the Kumbha would actually begin with the first of the
shahi snans (regal baths) on Makar Sankranti, January 14. The media, not
a patient animal at the best of times, had decided January 9 was good
enough to announce the beginning of the "first Kumbha of the millennium".
Well, it certainly was the first Kumbha in the age of satellite TV and
the Internet.
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| BEING
THERE: When the Kumbha peaks on January 24, 10,000 foreigners like
this lady (above) are expected to be in Allahabad (below) for Bahurupiya
community children like these, it's a time to entertain and earn
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From its
origins in the legendary churning of the cosmic ocean, to the 22,000 toilets
that have been built in the Sangam precincts, everything about the Kumbha
seems grand. To see it as merely a delight for the ethnographic tourist
or a particularly determined number-cruncher would, however, be unfair.
The Kumbha is, as a participant put it, a "dehat ka mela" (rural
festival), a truly egalitarian occasion linking the frail old woman from
Katni, wearing only a cotton sari but walking doggedly to the riverbank
in the biting cold that is 4.30 a.m. in January, to the young NRI from
America, coming home to rediscover his roots.
It is a
celebration of the geographical expanse of a faith and a country, warts
and all. Vicky, child of a "Bahurupiya" (professional fancy
dressers) family from Amritsar, comes seeking custom. Sri from Shimoga,
Karnataka, offers to sell you two rudraksha beads for Rs 150, agrees to
an offer of Rs 51 and then whispers she has a tiger paw that's worth Rs
2,000.
Minstrel
Manoranjan Das claims he lives in "Diwalighat, Kolkata". On
being probed, he smiles shyly, admits it's actually "Kalighat"
but he's trying to strike a rapport with alms givers who "celebrate
Diwali when we in Bengal observe Kali Puja". Then there's the hapless
pilgrim from Bettiah who went to the lost and found office to locate his
wife, only to be baldly informed she had "left with another man".
Forget the Paul McCartney sightings, it's the little people who make Kumbha
worth it.
-with Subhash
Mishra
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METRO TODAY
Sagarika
Ghose's The Gin Drinkers is easily the best diaspora novel set in India
and an account of existential dilemmas of Indian PLUs , writes INDIA TODAY
Deputy Editor Swapan Dasgupta in 