KUMBH CHURNEY

“Throughout the ages it has been the simple piety of faithful people who have not had the chance to be educated, or the leisure to reflect deeply, which has been the bedrock of all religions. The theologians with their logic chopping, their attempts to define the indefinable have all too often caused chaos & confusion. The Kumbh is an awe-inspiring demonstration of simple piety.”- Mark Tully, The Kumbh Mela
Originating from the Gomukh glacier, the Ganga flows down to the plains offering Her manna to the pilgrims who tread the path for a worship at Her banks and a dip in Her holy waters – the zenith of this worship culminating in the 3 month long ‘Kumbh Mela’ held once every 12 years.

Whilst the ‘shahi-snan’ days of astrological significance see crowds turning up in full throttle putting pressure on the organizing authorities, the days of lesser significance are marked by the orderly arrangement of crowds almost contrary to the average person’s concept of ‘Kumbh Mela’ built through the mental pre-conditioning of Bollywood’s famous ‘Kumbh mein bichde do bhai…’

Whilst a lot has been written and said about the glory of the Kumbh – my journey twice to the Mela this year bore the mark of the mythological significance of the Kumbh; on both occasions, rewarded with polarizing experiences.

With my parents joining in, our threesome cruised the highways on my initial trip in the early afternoon to catch a glimpse of the evening spectacle called the ‘Ganga Aarti’. Welcomed into Haridwar by the billboards of numerous spiritual organizations and political parties alike, we alighted at a large structure of Lord Shiva standing tall with the Ganges flowing in the backdrop in full splendor. Walking through a commercial gate that read ‘Aaj to Kumbh ka snan, baaki 364 din Dettol’, we made a beeline to the sacred ghat – Har ki Pauri (literally ‘Footsteps of the Lord’).

Offering salutations after a dip in the holy waters, we returned to our night sojourn through the scenes of the tents of varied structures and sizes built to accommodate the large congregation of Saints of various Orders, the famous ash-smeared Naga Sadhus & commoners alike.

Making our way through narrow, bustling lanes lined with vendors of various paraphernalia & sweetmeats, the next morning had begun with attempts to track down a certain ‘Panda’ who would help complete the final customary rites of my great-grand parents (after years of their demise), one of the prime objectives of our trip.

As the tradition goes, detailed family genealogies are maintained by these ‘Pandas’ (Hindu Pandits), in hand-written registers passed down to them over generations by their respective ancestors. Classified according to the original district of one’s ancestors, with special designated ‘Panda’ families being in charge of designated district registers, I was curious & excited to tread the unexplored and discover furthermore about my ancestral past.

Whilst initially locating the concerned ‘Panda’ seemed an arduous task with anyone enquired from claiming authority to complete the final rites (after all there are no free lunches and this lunch has perks attached), the undercurrent of rules governing the invisible network of the generations-long tradition soon swung in sidelining the charlatans. Guided to a certain ‘Om Hotel’ (apparently, our man now owned the hotel); we enquired our way into an alley amongst the back-roads of the marketplace.

With a stream of slippers cluttered outside the entrance, a door opened into a rectangular hall with three men in simple attire sitting cross-legged on a thick carpet. Enquiring into the family details and period of previous visit, one of them soon rose to emerge with a bunch of scrolls covered in a threaded-red cloth pulled out of a cupboard. Flipping his way through the thick paper scrolls with hand-written scribes running across the breadth, he soon rolled over to the pertinent scroll reading out my grand-parents names who had last visited during my father’s childhood. The records earlier on came as a revelation…

Lo & behold – images of a few life-spans flashed across my mind-space as I heard the names of a few of my ancestors whom I’d never seen or met but whose genes I carry on me and in that very instant, the until then arcane association with them stood revealed to me. With the oldest record dating back to pre-independence India, ancestral visits from Sindh, now in Pakistan had been recorded with personal signatures at every visit authenticating the updated entries. It seemed like real life time-lapse cinematography – in a few flashing seconds the family tree had originated from seed to stem, maturing into a bark with strong roots and off-shooting into further branches. With amazement & awe peaked to its hilt, my eyes scanned the vicinity for an ‘Intel Inside’ logo in disbelief of the hand-written records being maintained in such detail and dug out with such alacrity.

Having completed the ceremonial rites with reverence, we recorded the details of our visit with the assent of our signatures - the Panda had secured the future of his off-spring … few phenomena that have stood the test of time and will continue to do so probably for generations to come (view to know more about this concept of "Teertha Purohit") . Enquired of the next time a visit to Haridwar being planned seemed likely, it was ambiguous that the opportunity would present itself within a couple of weeks…

My second trip with a group of friends chanced within the 3-month auspicious Kumbh again. A late evening departure in an Innova had seen us stuck in traffic at various bends in the path. Time spent waiting for the ambers to change to greens had been interspersed with breaks en-route for attending nature’s calls – both of the stomach and otherwise.

It was almost closing in on mid-night when dawned by the realization of low fuel coupled with the instant attraction of the flashing lights of a fuel station, our naïve driver signaled for a short notice left turn on the high-speeding highway – the inevitable occured, another Innova speeding up at the rear end barged in from the left spoiling the until then unhindered privacy of our car’s posterior.

Shaken out of our stupor by the sound of the flirting Innova’s, we came into ourselves. Fortunately, not much damage had been done except for a dent at the back exposing the underbelly of the signal lamps. The relative calm in our car as regards the unfortunate incident had seen a rather eruptive reaction in the other.

With swear words oozing out of his gutkha-filled mouth, the driver of the other car came charging out towards ours – with his lean structure gathering a shaky momentum at every step, he pulled up our driver from his seat; what followed thereafter can best be put as a few *beep*, *beep* and some more *beeps*. Intoxicated and inebriated by breath, he was only close to getting physical when a few of us stepped in to salvage the situation. Inconsiderate of his role in the accident, he immediately stepped up to the car window switching off the coughing car engine and taking charge of the keys attempting to ensure a way out to make-good of the dent caused on his vehicle.

Outclassing him in deed, might & number (the order here is critical), we were soon able to gain control of the keys – negating the point of carrying the argument forward any further rationalized by the fact that both cars had been hit in the friction effected by the negligence of both the parties involved, we made our way back into the car moving on further along the highway leaving behind the swearing drunkard as he promised to get back at us.

The next oasis-matic fuel station along the highway pulled like a magnet – filling the parched fuel tank whilst emptying our bladders at the adjacent wash-room seemed routine until we realized that the short-lived inanimate crush (crash) of the Innova’s had developed into an animate relationship with the driver at the wheel – we were being followed. Ignoring the icy look in his eyes popping out of a stern-face, we moved along on our way whilst he seemed stuck to his cell-phone – barking away into the mouth-piece.

Having moved a few kms ahead whilst being followed, the somber mood inside the vehicle only seemed to be settling back to normal when our driver sat up awe-struck on his seat shrieking out loudly “Aage dekho!” – a few miles away a truck stood in the center of the highway curbing the ebb & flow of the speeding traffic; as though jehadis seeking to break out war, a sea of men with batons in their hands stood along the pavement waiting to close in on their unassuming, slow-approaching victim.

What we had not realized was that we were in the heart of one of the crime capitals of Uttar Pradesh – Mazaffarnagar, notorious for numerous cases of highway thefts and apparently made-to-look-for-the-record accidents; more importantly, given adequate time, a solo soul in his immediate neighborhood can gather enough momentum to outclass any stranger crowd at least in might and number. Sitting beside the driver, observing the imminent scene of gory intent unfolding to wrap its ruthless arms around us, the uniqueness of the situation held my thoughts for a moment… with a logical explanation of the facts to a fully-equipped frenzied crowd seeming a far cry, the mind immediately sprung to an appeal for the eternal magician to show His sleight of hand…

Just then the man who had got us in the midst of it all swung into action screeching a sharp U-turn and accelerating into top gear – the very same lackadaisical attitude of the public authorities of the Mayawati-government who were to be blamed for their inability to control local goons leading to the blasphemous confidence of effecting something of the sort about to be witnessed were now to be thanked for the uniformity of their lackluster attitude across departments (at least they exhibited the virtue of ‘equality in action’) – the otherwise well-divided highway seemed to have an unplugged gap in the divider only enough to allow our car to pass through as the make-shift fortification of gravel and sand temporarily strewn across gave way to the extreme thrust of the accelerator…

Retreating to the safe haven of a police-chowki located a couple of kms away, we registered an official complaint against the criminal only to discover that he had apparently already made a hit-&-run complaint against us over the phone to prove his case as one of simple retribution in the event of his being caught after the thrashing imbroglio. In consolation with our version of the incident, a few senior officers joined us in their jeep to enable us to back-track our retreated path and continue our onward journey to our destination.

As banter broke out in our vehicle praising our driver’s presence of mind, varied mental reactions to the situation came to the fore - some spoke of real life replicating reel life with Hollywood scenes of the underdog fighting his way through flooding the mind whilst others spoke of thanking their parents for having pushed them to karate class during childhood. Having satisfied us of the en-route safety by driving along a certain distance, the gentle police officers receded to their base chowki.

With onward plans of rafting in the Rishikesh rapids seeming far-fetched, our lazy and crumpled vertebrae found the solace of siesta on the Haridwar guest house mattresses at 4 in the morning.

Having dipped myself in the Ganges, as I sat by Her ghats, the words of Gibran rang in my ears:“Once I saw the face of a woman, and I beheld all her children not yet born.
And a woman looked upon my face and she knew all my forefathers, dead before she was born.”- Kahlil Gibran, The Voice of Kahlil Gibran
What the inimitable Gibran had in subtle humour expressed of the woman had been so true of my dual antithetical trip to the Kumbh – on the first occasion blessed by the experiential revelation of my ancestral background with the hopeful anticipation of its seamless continuance whilst on the other, cornered by the local mafia plotting to ensure an abrupt prohibition charged by their inglorious intent – only to be rescued by the grace of the divine alchemist.

But, then again, the mythological origin of the Kumbh itself bears testimony to the opposing forces of the positive & negative always at loggerheads with each other in all wordly phenomena. With the Gods (Devas) & demons (Asuras) competing in a tug-of-war whilst churning the Ocean of Milk (Samudra Manthan), the Kumbh is the celestial celebration of the discovery of the nectar of immortality (Amrit) – figuratively, the positive and negative energies in one’s personality play out continuously on the oceanic flow of mental emotions – it is only the value-conscious, intellectually charged few who achieve the ultimate goal of self-realization. Staying true to its nature, the Kumbh had revealed its full glory to me…

The Kumbh has concluded, but the churning is on and the journey has just begun… that’s the ‘Kumbh Churney!’