Maha Kumbh 2025 was the event with highest recorded gathering of humans ever known. About 670 million people visited the Kumbh and took a dip at the river junction of Prayagraj, within period of about 45 days. There was lot of publicity and hype around this event even before it started. I also got interested in it and participated in the same. Watching the event and the buzz around it, I could say there are a lot of dimensions around this event. I will share what were mine and some of the most widely know theories.
When and Where:
Kumbh event happens around every 12 years. There is Ardh (half) Kumbh every 6 years. There is a 144 year version that is called Maha Kumbh. Kumbh is associated the planetary motion cycles of Jupiter. Hence, 12 years play the role here. So the event is determined by planetary combination and has been known to be celebrated since more than thousands of years. People have used astronomy booklets(Panchang) to figure out the dates for this event and reach on time for millennia. This period is considered best for taking bath dip in river junctions at one of the four specific places in India. One of these four places are the main event space for any given Kumbh. This year, Kumbh was celebrated at Prayagraj, UP. Meaning of Prayag is river junction. River junctions have special respect in the followers of Hinduism. Raja means king. So Prayagraj means king of river junctions. So this place is very special from river junction perspective as well. With so many people coming to participate, there is a mini city setup to handle the stay. This mini city is called mela kshetra. This mela kshetra is about 40 square kilometer. Since this happens near river junction, people want to stay nearby. All the space is river catchment areas where permanent structures are not build to avoid environmental impacts. Hence, every Kumbh there is a make shift city to be built and undeployed post 45 days of use.
Story:
It is said that long time ago, there was an act of Samudra Manthan(churning of the ocean) performed by the team of devatas and daityas. There is an understanding that ocean holds lot of wealth in terms of natural resource, etc. During this process, Amrit(Elixir) was found in a pot. Kumbh means pot. There was a run by both the groups to get hold of this fruit of their effort. Fearing the misuse, the protector of Elixir ran, seeing both the groups going crazy to get hold of Elixir. While running, some of the drops of Elixir fell down from the Kumbh(pot), at the specific river junctions. These river junctions became the 4 points where Kumbh is celebrated. In lot of scriptures, it is mentioned that taking a dip at Prayagraj/major holy rivers, leads to human being elevated in their spiritual journey. Some will go to heaven if they so desire and others can attain salvation if they are working for that. Taking a dip at this Prayagraj during Kumbh is next level boost. I asked this question from one of the spiritual Guru. How can someone burn their negative karma just by taking a dip in the river? He explained that effects of positive/negative karma stick in our memories and those memories lead to behavior that gives results we desire/hate. If we truly believe that the dip will get rid of those karma, that will help override the bad memories. But, there is one condition. If you take a dip and believe your bad karma is cleaned, that will happen. If you again do those bad karma that you tried to override the memory off, those old memories will come back. So this dip hack works, but really hard to take advantage off. Most of the people will repeat their bad actions and negate the effect of cleanup. Think of it like an Elephant bath. The other important dimension of the event is meeting of the minds. It is the social media before the current forms of social media existed. Kind of like YouTube before the YouTube. The fact that it takes place at geography that marks meeting of 3 big rivers suggests that meeting of idea’s and sharing stories of humanity has been a big part of this event. It is suggested to stay there for at least few days rather than just going there, taking a dip and coming back. This points to meeting the big human family, eating at same place and taking a dip next day also symbolizes family retreat where the family size is really big.
Evolution:
The event has evolved over period of time. Given the history of Bhartiya civilization that dates back to tens of thousands BC as per recent work by Dr. Rupa Bhaty. So thousand years is just a drop in ocean when we talking about such a long history. Seems one big change took place about thousand years back during period of Shankaracharya. He advised sadhus to form groups that can help provide ground up resistance when the leadership and army of the land has been corrupted by thought that believes in correctness of weapon over a good argument. At this point, there was a formation of something called Akharas. Something like a big scale Dojo. At this point, there are about 19 big Akharas. So sadhus who visit Kumbh generally associate themselves in one of these categories. The latest of these Akharas was the formation of Sikhism. Here the elder soon of the family was asked to join military in the north western front of India, to protect the society from attacks by invaders from the West. There were certain practices as part of military group that these men were supposed to follow. This group came to be known as Sikh. Akharas take lot of spotlight in the event. This also shows the importance of the event where society changes itself to get ready for emerging situation.
State of the event:
While growing up in metropolitan city, I hardly knew anyone in my circle who has gone to Kumbh. All our media and movies use Kumbh reference to show family member being lost/abducted when they went to Kumbh. So there was an active effort to just highlight bad aspects. I know lot of people have been attending the Kumbh since long time. So I know there are parts of India where very high percentage of people attend Kumbh and then there are metros where hardly anyone goes. With Maha Kumbh 2025, this equation changed big time. I know quiet a few people in my family and circle who went to Kumbh. There were more who wanted to go but couldn't gather courage. So what was the change? First, we all have mobile phones. So the risk of getting lost got reduced significantly. Second, the safety measures, technologies used were being advertised well in advance to build confidence in general public that the event is going to be very safe. There was lot of safety staff. Very big factor was the Chief Minister of state Yogi Adityanath monitoring the event. He has a history of being very efficient administrator. So there is a big trust factor. With Kumbh being Maha Kumbh that happens every 144 years, this became a once in lifetime event and trust in current administration motivated lot of people to attend this event. Same happened with me. I had to travel to India in first 3 months of 2025. When I came to know of Maha Kumbh dates, I planned my travel so that I might be able to visit Maha Kumbh. While I was in India, I started to check travel options. I was easily able to find a place to stay. There were more than 4 thousand groups that had setup camps in Kumbh Mela Kshetra(area). Lot of these camps offered free place of stay and free food. Free food was available 24 hours a day. For staying the rooms were not generally private unless someone goes in a big group to need full room for the group. There was paid food available inside mela kshetra and food options outside mela kshetra in the city. There was no transport allowed/available within Mela Kshetra. Only police vehicle, food/utility vehicles and camp heads vehicle were allowed inside the Mela Kshetra to avoid accidents with millions of pedestrians expected. There was a separate area that was given to private parties for luxury camp setup providing paid camps to private citizens.
Accessibility:
City of Prayagraj is connected to major cities via all modes of transport, having airport, multiple train stations and bus station. Multiple road highways connect to the city. With population of about 6 million people and accepting 15 million or higher tourists a day was big deal. During the event, all vehicles with outside registration plate were not allowed inside the city. There were specific parking centers created around Mela Kshetra. These parking centers were still far from Mela Kshetra. For buses, only government buses were allowed inside the city to reach intercity bus station. With the outpouring of visitors, travel near Mela Kshetra came to near grind sometimes. We would hear stories of taxi/cab taking 8 hours to cover 22 km from airport to Mela Kshetra. There were six special dates within 45 days period that are considered better than other days. On these dates, there were expected to be close to 50 million people visiting the Kumbh. On these dates, some of the road highways connecting to Prayagraj were blocked at the entry itself so that more people don't pour in till some people move out to make way. This caused flashing news across the media saying 300km long traffic. There was an event where about 30 people died in the night who were sleeping on river bank and lot of people standing in line got scared of something and started to run out of line to save themselves and didn't see people on the ground. All this resulted in some of the interested people getting scared and opting not to visit. Some of us were scared of the cleanliness on river water. There was a report published that water quality is not good. But, I didn't get sick nor see anyone around me having stomach issues due to water. The chief minister was drinking river water every single day in front of cameras boosting confidence. There were some political reasons as well wherein some groups didn't want the event to succeed and would do anything to support negative event/news. As for me, I decided almost on the last day to travel and I went along with my cousin.
I stayed in an ashram which was setup in sector specifically setup near the river junction giving them priority. I could see different groups of sadhus. Naga Sadhus get lot of attention since they remain naked all the time. Different sadhus show display different skills during this event. There are lot of sermons(pravachan) held in ashrams. There are lot of discussions held between heads of sadhus. I could see people from all parts of India apart from those who travelled from abroad. I felt that the system of Kumbh is like meeting of minds. The biggest meet where people coming from different regions come, talk, stay together, eat together, share local stories, exchange idea and take bath together. Something like a family reunion. This is the social media platform equivalent created before the modern social media platform. This family like atmosphere hit me and made me understand what is Bharat/India. Why India is India? In most parts of the world, nation state grouping is based on common language. It is rate to see multiple language in a big strong state. India kind of being exception and I didn't know of very strong reasons. Europe is another example where people still form different countries just based on language even though they are all present in small region. Attending Kumbh, made me realize why Bharat/India is one country since time immemorial. Names of historical books like Mahabharat clearly talk about the identity of Bharat since thousands of years. This social media connect called Kumbh which makes us like one big family is the reason why we have this country called Bharat.
Scaling:
The temporary city is setup in river catchment area. During the summers, when there is more water, most the area used goes under water. This prevents creation of long term physical infrastructure
In IT world, I think this points to usage of virtual infrastructure like virtual machines, dockers, etc. as solution for extreme scaling rather than physical machine based scaling only. Different type of people were given different type of spaces. Serious groups are gives space near the critical resource (Sangam geography- meeting point of rivers). More network bandwidth was provided in serious parts of the temporary city. There were vehicle based mobile network towers to move the tower in region where there is high network load that is going beyond the capacity available in that region
Risks:
The probability of dying in a commercial air travel accident is about 1 in 13.7 million passenger boardings. About 670 million people visited this with around 30 deaths. This represents lesser risks than modern day commercial air travel.
I am glad I decided to visit Kumbh. I could feel the positive energy with millions around me. It enhanced my idea of India.
No comments:
Post a Comment