Eradicate self-justification. Then alone can you annihilate your ego.

Swami Sivananda

The ego isn’t wrong; it’s just unconscious. When you observe the ego in yourself, you are beginning to go beyond it. Don’t take the ego too seriously.

Eckhart Tolle

Suffering is not holding you; you are holding suffering. When you become good at the art of letting sufferings go; then you’ll come to realize how unnecessary it was for you to drag those burdens around with you. You are responsible. Existence wants your life to become a festival.

Osho

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart give yourself to it. That’s the work of a true professional.

Gautama Buddha

Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

Lao Tzu

The only way to show our gratitude is to help others. If it has been a gracious gift to you, give it to others as a gracious gift.

Osho

Offer your gratitude to God. Then you will feel that inside you a sweet, fragrant and beautiful flower is growing. That is the flower of humility.

Sri Chinmoy

When you experience true gratitude as not only an emotion, but as a state of mind, all traces of being a victim, and self-pity wash away and are replaced with power and connection to God.

Chris Fenwick

We left Allahabad early this morning; Gangaji rolling like quicksilver  punctuated with yellow and gold marigolds, and the moon an orange button low in the sky. A pair of songbirds sat on the wire outside the gate and bid us goodbye. From the Shastri Bridge across the Ganga, smoke drifted over soggy heaps of straw where once stood the grand halls and huts of pilgrims. As quickly as the pop-up city appeared, it is now disappearing. As quickly as the estimated 30 million arrived this weekend, they have also disappeared, and while the bridges and even the Grand Trunk Road that crosses the whole of India and links us to Allahabad and the sangam, were closed to all but foot traffic and cycles yesterday, today, at 7:30 anyway, there is hardly a sign of unusual traffic. The Mela is officially over for the kalpavasis, though some may stay on for another week or two, and the akharas are decamping, headed home or to Varanasi to celebrate Shiva Ratri in Shiva’s city of light.

We cross first the Ganga and then the Yamuna, adorned with boats and aglow with pastel light, and head toward Khajuraho. By 9:00, humped dainty white cows with gentle dark eyes have replaced the water buffalo in the yards and streets of the villages. The farm houses are bigger with pitched roofs of baked tile, plastered walls adorned with blooming bougainvillea.

By 9:30 an escarpment of red sandstone looms and the buses labor to wind up and up out of the Gangatic Plain. We stop on the plateau and scramble over the sandstone slickrock littered with boulders, but a bus load of foreigners attracts attention, and out of nowhere we suddenly have a crowd of young men with hungry eyes, and it’s time to move on.

By late afternoon, we’ve left the ripening mustard and wheat fields behind, and cross dry chaparral, rocky and uninhabited, though occasionally we spot cattle on the trails through the brush. The chaparral gibes way to a scrub forest, and then we are climbing again through deeply dissected mesas. We share the nearly empty road with brightly decorated “Goods Carriers,” the ubiquitous trucks that haul freight all over India. At higher elevations the forest is denser, and soon we are driving through the Panna Tiger Reserve. The roads are narrow—no shoulders, no ditches, no guard rails—so the feeling of being in the forest is intimate and immediate. We see no tigers, but we are scrutinized by a number of monkeys sitting on the side of the road. The two large rivers we cross are clean, as are the roadsides. The burden of India’s vast population weighs less heavily here.

Leaving the Tiger Reserve, we pass through fields of wheat, studded with the incidental tree, including palm trees. Boulder strewn buttes and cactus fences tickle the impressions of the Southwest, and for a moment I forget where we are. But only for a moment, because the Himalayan Institute gate appears, and here we are. Welcome to HI-Khajuraho!

We were invited to visit Sri Vidya Sadhana Peetha at the Mela, whose headquarters are located in Varanasi (Banaras). They are a not part of the organization of swamis, but instead a group of practitioners of Sri Vidya, an exalted philosophy as well as various practices. They are conducting a unique puja that includes reciting the Lalita Sahasranama, the thousand names of the Divine Mother, while offering flowers to her yantra, the Sri Chakra. There are subsidiary images of the Divine mother set up on square tables in the hall, and the pandits in training offer rice with each mantra. The ritual starts with practices to cleanse the area and those reciting, and also involves a series of mudras or hand gestures. This is a typically tantric kind of practice, and we are told it’s the only one of its kind being done in the Mela.

We also notice a murti of Ganesha behind the Sri Yantra which is completely buried in roses, and are told that what we see is a carved face for Ganesha, but behind it is a rare self-manifesting emanation of Ganesha in the root of the mandara tree.

As is the case with so many of the camps here, feeding people is a priority, and we are given prashad in the form of laddus, enough to take home to the pilgrims who didn’t make the long hike in to the camp. The traffic was unexpectedly heavy, so we found the bridges and roads into the Mela temporarily closed. Two buses returned to campus, but about 20 of our group went bravely into the unknown—how far is it? How long will it take? Will it be dangerously crowded?—and were rewarded with a beautiful ceremony.

For us he told the story of King Harishchandra whose legendary generosity was tested by Rishi Vishvamitra.  The format is a bit of story-telling, and then he breaks into song, backed up by a harmonium, two hand-crafted percussion instruments, and a drummer with nails strapped to his fingers. Radhe Shyam sings or speaks, and then the chorus chimes in, all with great enthusiasm and sincerity. Imagines of Greek theatre and medieval troubadours come to mind, and even though the language is the local dialect of Hindi, the heart-felt performance needs no interpretation.

With one more major bathing day coming up, pilgrims are still streaming into the Mela, even as many are leaving. We pass by some camps which are pulling up stakes, battered by last week’s storm and perhaps ready to move on as two major bathing days are past. But our favorite mala merchant is still in business, as is the peanut vendor, the pan shop, the bangle shop, and the fortune telling bird. The later proves irresistible.

Two little birds in a small orange cage on cloth spread on the ground catch our eye. Dozens of envelopes, each containing a card with a deity on one side and your fortune on the other are fanned out on the ground cloth. The birds’ agent collects eleven rupees from you, asks your name, and releases a bird. The bird pecks an envelope, and the handler offers it to him, but if he doesn’t pull the card out, the handler throws it aside and the bird chooses another, and so on, until finally the bird pulls a card out and flips it over. This is your fortune. The two we sampled assured us that though we had some past difficulties in life, it was all good coming up. My card featured Durga, and promised prosperity.

Be that as it may, the difficulties in life are apparently not completely over. After walking to the heart of the Mela and then some, we thought we’d have a better chance of catching a ride on a busy road, but we had no idea we were on the busiest  road….. Hailing an auto rickshaw, affectionately called a tuk-tuk because of the sound it makes, we settled in gratefully for a 30-minute ride across the river and downstream to campus. Our intrepid driver blasted his way down the back streets of old Allahabad so narrow that no jeeps, SUVs or cars could follow, and then down a muddy rutted back path to the river and up the bank toward the Mela.

But alas, an hour later, after being turned away from several pontoon bridges (how and when the roads and bridges into the Mela close seems to be a need to know basis, ie, you go and its either closed or it’s not), we are right back on Alopi Bagh road, in the heart of a terrible snarl of traffic, passing by the exact location where we first hailed the tuk-tuk. Nonetheless we are happy to be riding instead of walking, so we just enjoy the commotion and the ever-changing and dizzying sensory experience of India on the move, and finally arrive home two hours later, tired but happy. A column head in the paper this morning laments: “Another Day of Jam on Sangam Route.”And we were there. Twice.

With one more major bathing day coming up, pilgrims are still streaming into the Mela, even as many are leaving. We pass by some camps which are pulling up stakes, battered by last week’s storm and perhaps ready to move on as two major bathing days are past. But our favorite mala merchant is still in business, as is the peanut vendor, the pan shop, the bangle shop, and the fortune telling bird. The later proves irresistible.

Two little birds in a small orange cage on cloth spread on the ground catch our eye. Dozens of envelopes, each containing a card with a deity on one side and your fortune on the other are fanned out on the ground cloth. The birds’ agent collects eleven rupees from you, asks your name, and releases a bird. The bird pecks an envelope, and the handler offers it to him, but if he doesn’t pull the card out, the handler throws it aside and the bird chooses another, and so on, until finally the bird pulls a card out and flips it over. This is your fortune. The two we sampled assured us that though we had some past difficulties in life, it was all good coming up! My card featured Durga, and promised prosperity.

Be that as it may, the difficulties in life are apparently not completely over. After walking to the heart of the Mela and then some, we thought we’d have a better chance of catching a ride on a busy road, but we had no idea we were on the busiest  road….. Hailing an auto rickshaw, affectionately called a tuk-tuk because of the sound it makes, we settled in gratefully for a 30-minute ride across the river and downstream to campus. Our intrepid driver blasted his way down the back streets of old Allahabad so narrow that no jeeps, SUVs or cars could follow, and then down a muddy rutted back path to the river and up the bank toward the Mela. But alas, an hour later, after being turned away from several pontoon bridges (how and when the roads and bridges into the Mela close seems to be a need to know basis, i.e., you go and its either closed or it’s not), we are right back on Alopi Bagh road, in the heart of a terrible snarl of traffic, passing by the exact location where we first hailed the tuk-tuk. Nonetheless we are happy to be riding instead of walking, so we just enjoy the commotion and the ever-changing and dizzying sensory experience of India on the move, and finally arrive home two hours later, tired but happy. A column head in the paper this morning laments: “Another Day of Jam on Sangam Route.”And we were there. Twice.

This morning we are treated to a unique form of kirtan from somewhere up the river, the exuberant call and response accompanied by tabla and harmonium. Spirits are lifting after two days of rain and high wind, and a stampede in the crowded Allahabad train station that resulted in 36 deaths.

Two days ago, as a result of the high wind and rain, the power was out everywhere. No lights. Anywhere. It was dark and quiet, even at 4:30 am, prime time for PA systems throughout the Kumbh Nagari (the Mela pop-up city). From the roof of the main building, the Mela was not visible. There were no lights anywhere—across the river, in the villages, up the river, down the river—everywhere, all dark. And quiet.

Since we were between groups, the staff had an unplanned rainy day in. We sat on the first floor bereft of electronic devices drinking chai and reading old New Yorkers, a detective novel featuring Vish Puri the intrepid Delhi sleuth, a coffee table book featuring the colorful Juna Akhara, a bit of serious scripture, and Myth and Legends of Ganges. The wind blew like a fiend and it rained and rained and rained. All in all a quite satisfactory day! I’m sure it wasn’t a pleasant night down in Kumbh Nagari, the pop-up city on the flooding flood plain, but we were snug and warm and happy in the darkness and the quiet!

Fortunately the Mela administration soon restored water and power, and worked with the city of Allahabad to control the flow of pilgrims in and out of the Mela grounds as well as the railway station and across the bridges. Two days later the volume of sound from the sangam reassures us that the Mela is once again in full swing.

The third and last of the Institute pilgrim groups arrived yesterday in time for late afternoon chai and a fabulous sunset over the Ganga. And so the last leg of the Allahabad pilgrimage begins.

Photo Courtesy of Carl Kerridge

The Mela is in full swing. Basant Panchami, the first day of spring by the lunar Indian calendar, and one of the major bathing days, is just past. The roads in and out of the Mela and Allahabad are periodically closed to stem the overwhelming influx of pilgrims—the infrastructure is groaning under the weight of an estimated 30 million either coming in or going out. A stream of humanity pours peacefully into the sangam, steady and intent, flowing past all obstacles, giving a locus and shape to Sarasvati flowing to meet the Yamuna and Ganga at the sangam.

Photo Courtesy of Carl Kerridge

This year the Mela grounds extend up and down the banks on both sides of the river much further than at the last big Mela (the Maha Kumbha Mela in 2001—this is the Purna Mela). There are so many people that they are visible on satellite photos from space—not the buildings, the urban lights, the infrastructure of society, but the actual people themselves, standing shoulder to shoulder, walking side by side, so many of them that they show up as a mass of dark humanity covering square mile after square mile.

Metal plank streets along the bank of the Ganga connect our campus to the main Mela site. In addition to the compounds of various swamis and religious organizations, the “streets” are lined with shops offering vegetables and dal and chawal (rice), bangles, towels, blankets, and assorted puja items, little oil lamps, brass saucers and pitchers, malas, strings of beads, and children’s toys. The shopkeeper hands us malas in a small sack hand-folded from an old newspaper. Dozens of neatly folded sacks hang together on the back wall in anticipation of many more customers. The roasted peanuts we buy for a few rupees from a wooden cart are also served in a cone of newspaper, as is the most excellent salt, wrapped in its own packet of newsprint.

Photo Courtesy of Carl Kerridge

The camps of the monastic orders are ramped up to feed, house, inspire and entertain the millions of pilgrims, sadhus, and the curious and opportunistic, all seeking grace and fortune of one kind or another. At mid-day groups of swamis squat like beds of marigolds along the compound wall waiting for lunch to be served. Most compounds include a lecture hall, some of which are quite grand, dining halls and make-shift kitchens, plus living quarters for staff and devotees. Every evening the stages are full of re-enactments of scenes from Krishna’s life, or from the ever-popular Ramayana—all in Hindi of course.

Looking around we see our conditions are paradise compared to the dusty congested tent city that houses many of the kalpvasis (long-term pilgrims). So we’re even more grateful to return to our campus with its tree-choking philodendrons, feral house plants, rubber trees on steroids, huge peepal, bunyan, mahua (mahagony) trees and brick paths lined with marigolds and fields of roses and aloe.  Mangos, neem, jackfruit, a grove of amla fruit trees, rows of teak, an acre of pongamia, bunches of bananas and bamboo; and bilva and datura, sacred to Lord Shiva—the campus is full of exotic vegetation.The orchard anchoring the northern boundary of campus is home to guavas, lemons, and bananas—all of which are ripening. The parakeets, bulbus, mynas, and jungle babblers are hanging out in the guava trees these days for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Ace photographer Carl Kerridge has been documenting his pilgrimage with us to the Kumbha Mela and Khajuraho on Facebook. If you haven’t already, see (https://www.facebook.com/himalayaninstitute) or (https://www.facebook.com/Carl.Kerridge.photographer.artist?fref=ts) for images and posts from boat rides,Vedic wedding ceremonies, havans, candid shots of Group 2, fabulous photos of Ganga, the Allahabad and Khajuraho campuses, and of course, the stunning and vivid Kumbha Mela.

You might also enjoy following Harvard’s work at the Mela. Harvard has sent a number of research teams to study the sociological aspects of the Mela’s “pop-up city.” They are studying everything from medical services to transportation, sanitation, power, administration–basically how in the world can a city of 30+million pop-up over night and function so well and so peacefully?

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/01/inside-indias-pop-up-city/

Blog Name: Mapping the Kumbh Mela
Blog URL: http://mappingthemela.wordpress.com

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