Faith

After several months, I finally left Delhi on a Saturday night for a day long trip to Allahabad to attend the Maha Kumbh Mela.

We reached Allahabad Station late in the morning, stretched our bodies and began searching for a comfortable hotel room and found one some time later. Spread out over the bed, I felt my legs breathe and fell unconscious. It was one of the best sleeps I had had in recent days. After resting for a couple of hours, we checked out of the hotel and started towards the Ganga riverside. Music from bhajans and announcements from Lost and Found booth were the accompanying noises. We reached the riverside, which had turned into a picnic spot. Groups of people spread over their respective cloths; some preparing for the holy dip; some returning drenched and others like me looking at the amazing view, amazed.

From past experiences I have learnt that crowded places are breeding grounds for eve-teasing and ensuing skirmishes. Standing there, eying for hotspots, I found none; no angry voices, no brawls, no sudden rush. Women were changing clothes in makeshift cardboard structures, but no one was interested; or were they tempted, yet afraid? Were these urges thumbed under by the fear of god? India, in recent times, has gained infamy as a place unsafe for women. Did their faith, then, give domestic women courage to be a part of this crowd and perform rituals with a zeal equivalent to that of men? Most people carried with them a plastic bottle filled with dirty/holy river water back home. These superstitions, I believe, are a part of the super structure that religion provides us; for, we do need a common faith to be able to work in unison. Possibly, this is the reason that god and religion exist and will continue to.

We went into the water - our invasion limited to a safe depth by a string of boats - and played for sometime; one of my wise friends performed the rites. It was fun. A mela! A huge congregation of people of all sorts; sideways strewn with hawkers, food tents, relaxation camps; groups of babas smoking chillum; a greedy call from one of my friends which led us to joining one such group and smoking a mild chillum that set our laughter rolling; a foreigner photographing a baba with the most swollen eyes; brushing river sand off our wiry hairs; the same friend wanting to digress towards an old fort but tired, we continued on our long way to the bus depot.