My wife Tauby and I experienced wave upon wave of bliss during our three-day visit to the Ardh Kumbh in Allahabad earlier this year. Having been to the Maha Kumbh in 2001, I was keen to re-live the experience. My staff, impressed with my bhakti (devotion), presented me with a bhagwa (saffron) lungi, kurta and jacket so I could look a part of the ambience. The UP Tourisim camp we had booked was better than we expected and our tents were extremely well appointed with fresh sheets and blankets, western style attached toilets, and thankfully no television or telephone. We were within walking distance of the sangam and Kumbh shetra.
The entire atmosphere was saturated with incense and the fragrance of flowers, chiming bells, pravachans, yagnas, poojas and bhajans played at high decibles. A unique communitarianism and social equality is reflected here. A vibrancy of color, bright blue skies, white sands, shades of red in the pooja shops, colorful posters, decorated gates and tents were a visual delight. There were native village groups in every imaginable costume from all over the country. There were yogis, mahatamas, sants and sadhus, some in garish clothes of gold, others less expensively but picturesquely dressed, many of them partly or fully naked. The melange of priests, soldiers, religious mendicants, buyers and sellers, beggars and bandits, with a smattering of foreigners along with us two Parsis from Nagpur provided an exotic display. This unique event blends religious and cultural features.
Images of the Kumbh taken by Naushad (top right) and Tauby Bhagwagar
On the second morning, the auspicious day of Magh Purnima, we hired a boat from the Yamuna side of the sangam (place where the three rivers Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati meet) where we took a dip in the holy confluence and performed the traditional pooja. Our panda (priest) was thrilled to learn we were Zoroastrians and insisted we must be from the same family as the Tatas! He performed an elaborate pooja for us, ordering Tauby to touch my feet (which she did for the first time!) and insisted that I smear her forehead with sindoor (vermillion powder).
On our return we watched the crowded banks of the Ganga where most devotees bathe and perform pooja, fed the birds, waved to other pilgrims on boats and heard stories about the various Akhadas (sects) like the naga sadhus from our boatman. We met interesting people and exchanged ideas on spiritualism and life. Govind baba was a Canadian sadhu with a flowing white beard and a pink face which radiated grace and gentleness.
We sat by the sangam in the evening watching the Ganga arti, sipping hot sweet tea and soaking in the sights. Tauby and I felt closeness and a feeling of pure bliss no five star resort could have given.
So what’s the Kumbh all about? Legends say that at one time Brahma, the creator, advised the gods to retrieve the kumbh (pot) containing the nectar of immortality (amrit). As Dhanwantari, the divine healer, appeared with the kumbh containing nectar in his palms, a great fight ensued between the gods and demons to wrest the kumbh from him. During the fierce battle in the sky, a few drops of nectar fell in four different places: Allahabad, Haridwar, Nasik and Ujjain.
Since then, whenever the planets align in the same position once in twelve years, pilgrims and devotees converge to commemorate this divine event at a Kumbh Mela at one of these four holy places coinciding with one round of Jupiter through the Zodiac.
Naushad Bhagwagar