9th January 2010
A friend emailed saying this year's
Maha Kumbh in Haridwar had been rated #2 amongst top 11 events not to be missed in 2010 by Forbes India magazine. That is what started it all...
January to February 2010 - the group got busy with plans, counter-plans, coordinating dates, leaves, tickets, bookings - for a group geographically spread all over from Dubai to Bangalore to Mumbai to Pune - the decision to go was the easiest first step and a natural atunement of thinking. But it was not to be and unfortunately, somehow somewhere some of us lost the enthusiasm, and the plan remained just that, a plan. Probably, it was not our shared destiny to go together this one time. This one time then, my travel group was not my friends or colleagues, it was family :-)
Sometimes some journeys are worth making, just for the sake of making the journey. Though the "real" reason for Kumbh lies in taking that dubki at the edge of the steps that ultimately dissolve into the
Ganga at the ghat at Haridwar, the test of Kumbh lies not in taking the dubki, it lies in getting to Kumbh. Here too, just as in life, it is the journey that counts.
March 2010
Can't, won't, shouldn't - these are choices. Will - that is conviction. My mom, you see, loves to philosophize (it runs in the family ;-)), so once said, so it was to be. Haan, hum Kumbh jayenge. Aur, just like that, hum nikal pade!
Getting leave logistics figured out wasn't easy - from IIP to WPI to RBI and back to next month's WPI, the data Gods were somehow not sure of letting me go. But a family get-together, and a close cousin's wedding tilted the scales in favour of "personal commitments" in the first week of April and I was on my way to Delhi with a few days in hand to "spare" for Kumbh :-)
Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained
"What is it about faith that inspires millions" - I once
blogged. I am still trying to figure that one out :-)
Suffice to say, it just does. Why else would a simple wish to wash one's face in the ganges before heading to the hotel be met in the kind of unusual circumstances that would give a
K-serial a run for its money - a road trip by four women in the heart of UP, to get to Uttaranchal involving moments as beautiful as breakfast amid a bed of flowers in Cheetal, to a loud, raucous altercation with a (bunch of) cop(s) for "not talking politely to a lady when asked for directions" (ahem, that was me ::a bit embarrassed ::), to arriving red-faced, lost, tired and thirsty with a traffic jam enough to test enough a saint's patience and a choke a car's cogs, to de-tours and roadblocks that would put even a master-architect in a tizzy - the "on the way" to Haridwar was surreal to say the least - and I don't mean that in a awe-struck wow kinda way! Sheesh man, can't a girl even be sarcastic without having to spell that out explicitly?! The bright side, we were all PJsters on a roll - with frustration and hunger dominating ours senses so completely that my sister when asking for directions for the umpteenth time asked for "dudhiya" chowk despite repeat performances of "doodhadhari chowk kis taraf hai" causing the passer-by to double-take and eliciting a bout of uncontrollable excessive giggling from all of us, including our shy, quiet, 24 year old driver who had refrained from saying anything except "good morning didi" since we had tumbled into the car at 5:20 a.m.!
They say every cloud has a silver lining - trust me, that day with the sun beating mercilessly down on us, we would have welcomed any cloud and drawn the silver lining ourselves with a nice glitter pen! It was hot, really really hot, in the way that only North India can be!
Finally, we lost it. There seemed no logical way of getting to the hotel even though we had touched Haridwar via a long detour that would have led us straight to Rishikesh, and another diversion by a cop loudly mouthing expletives at us when we slowed down to ask him for directions finally got my goat. Needless to say, in the moral science and conduct class I gave him, somehow I am sure I was definitely not giving a live demo of ladylike behaviour! :$
In the anger-laced five minutes after, physiology took over, we took the first visible turn and lo behold there was a ghat - near-empty, sleepy with the water beckoning us for a dip, and we rushed..clothes, cell-phone (my sis!) and all! The first dubki in the fresh cool water somehow was reward enough for the whole journey - the rest would all be bonus! :-)
The break was perfect - a mid-afternoon bath, followed by lunch at a nearby
dhaba seemed the perfect recipe for a nice afternoon siesta. Slight glitch, though the traffic Jam had eased but we still didn’t know how to get to our hotel even though a full stomach somehow makes one feel invincible! ;-)
But there were conversations incomplete and arguments unresolved...
As soon as we ordered for the customary after-lunch
chai (ok, customary in my family - I did say I was Punjabi!), we were stung by the arrival of the same cop(s) who had been not too friendly a few hours ago. While my sisters groaned; they know how my lectures tend to repeat themselves sometimes; my mom was purely apprehensive - somehow in the archaic world of MCP dominated North India, a girl doesn’t mess with a cop and get away too easily. Surprise! He turned to us, humbled and smiling (hmm almost..) with the cool interiors of the dhaba proving to be the perfect setting for a "madam don't get me wrong, hum aise nahi hain, bas stressed hain" followed by detailed and perfect instructions on how we could get to our hotel! For both tables, the new-found friendship was indeed heart-warming :D
The festival that was
This is about a journey. Enough said. But the destination was what sealed the bond. From cardboard cut-outs the size of the hall in a 1 BHK in Bombay, to causes as varied as "fight global warming" to "Save Ayurveda", trust me, the colours, vibrancy and energy of Kumbh visitors makes them the best possible "brand ambassadors" for UP tourism!;-)
The signposts said it all - welcome Mrs. Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi - the unofficial but popularly accepted to be India's first bahu and the messiah of Indian politics (ok, so I have a crush on the guy, so what! :P). Of course, we - as in the visitors to the Kumbh on 4th of April 2010 - were doomed to wild-goose chase after chase, traffic loops and irritant officials. Add of that Mr. L.K. Advani and the CM of the state also jostling for their fair share of paap-dhona, and the path to the holy dip is singed by a blaze of unholy exchanges!
But in the shivirs1 of the "bhakts" who had parked themselves in criss-crosses all over the countryside, life went on as usual since it had been so from the beginning of the festival - yoga workshops, prayer chants, and the clang of
manjiras and drums to take their respective "lord" for the holy dip. It crazy right, why would God need a holy dubki? :O Dunno, beats me!
There where semi-clad fakirs walked hand in hand with barefoot shradhalus and a sadhu maharaj gave a lift to two hitchhikers in his chauffeur-driven car, the Ganges somehow equalized all human revellers on its ghats - from sadhu to child, all were equal, all had to wait their turn and all got what they had come for - paap ka toh pata nahi, but in the cool undercurrents of the Ganges, inhibitions, fears and hysteria somehow ebbed away.
Of Human Bondage
It is not true that we can get whatever our heart desires, for what we desire may not be what we need. But it is true that the callings of faith beckon some with the path as clear as a moonlit walkway on a full-moon night - you don't what lurks around the corner but you tread on. The path of faith guides all of us, it may be faith in our friends, families, jobs, boss, or simply in a "God". Whatever it is, a leap of faith, finding the courage to face the unknown or the desire to scram makes us human - from scared yet self-preserving, to vulnerable yet resilient. It is this steel of resilience, this "not going" is not an option that Kumbh helped me discover in me. My friends are v.fond of calling me a bhagodi - my self-preservation instincts always guide me to flee, "get out", "move on" if I sense that a problem cannot be fixed, a situation cannot be resolved, a known cannot be trusted. "Run Shireen run" - I had screamed when on a midnight stroll on campus, my friends and I suddenly realised that a car was following us despite being trained in self-defence techniques - when in fear of counter-party risk, "getting out" is simply part of how I react. It is this instinct that bothers my parents, my sense of rootlessness that allows me to be at home anywhere and cut ties with the past if pain is all that it has given me - it is this that has had me bothered ever since I was old enough to think - that I need to be constantly reassured else I simply let go. Kumbh made me see what I really was - not rootless but looking for my roots, not detached but looking for something/someone worth getting attached to, not confused but just not aware. I realised I don't run away from a problem, I somehow run towards a solution - cutting my losses before its too late. Unfortnately for me, while people "find" or "get" what they want by the time they reach the grand old age of 28, I may be getting there (in exactly a week's time) but I still haven't "found" it - maybe coz I don't know what I am looking for, or maybe coz it hasn't found me! I remain, as yet, a seeker of my destiny, purpose, focussed on the jouney, going with the flow, with no idea when the tide will turn and when I should head back - coz I don't know if it is the open seas that I belong to or the quiet calm of the beach...one day though, I will:-)
Till then, I am human and somehow that sums it up!;-))
yours,
slightly-enlightened-but-still-confused-and-now-really-sleepy!
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