Wednesday, January 10, 2007

A journey to Kumbh

After 3 and half hours of tiresome journey, one of my friends yelled: hey! Look, it’s beautiful. Expecting nothing great, I slowly turned to find really a scenic beauty. We were crossing the bridge at Allahbad and the lightings of Ardhkumbh were at their best stretching to around 5 odd kms on both sides. My friend started to take pictures and I had to be content only with my mobile phone camera which was really unrecognizable at the end.
My sole aim of this visit was to get a feel as to how does one feel when others are busy writing their paper (for which they had come) and you are free as a bird to do anything you wish. After a good night’s sleep we went to the Sangam.
At the ghat, I easily found the monopolistic ladies selling small cans for filling water, so called pure Ganga jal. When I neared the place of holy dip through the small boat, I was feeling ashamed of the bathroom with just the sky as the roof. Everyone was telling the importance of the dip and I was ashamed of the ladies (though they were also taking the dip). To add to the agony the saviour of our religion, the pandits were busy making money with four liners mantra and the multiple times used coconut. Used because, small children were hired by this man to find the used coconut from the Sangam for further use. One should really learn how to make business without investing 2 pennies (one penny for coconut bought for the first time!).
Leaving this aside, I also did not know how to swim. Only one of my fiends knew and I was pretty sure that at the time of need he will be first and only one to be at the shore. Finally I decided to get into the Ganges/Yamuna/Saraswati. The water was so cold that I immediately empathized with the souls of Titanic tragedy. How would they have felt when they sunk into freezing water .It was not as cold and my legs had started getting numb.
After the dip I now was considering myself pure and at that time I could see interface of Ganges and Yamuna, Ganges with dull brownish colour and Yamuna with greenish attire.
Though earlier the reason was, I was busy seeing something else.
The enormity of the Ardhkumbh was awesome and no qualms as to why, brothers getting separated in the kumbh mela was the theme of uncountable Bollywood classics. We also would have needed to go to “bhule bhatke shivir” thanks to tariff free call to local airtel connections.

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