“[...] It is done in love, or it is done in fear; I do not know which it is. No matter what the impulse is, the act born of it is beyond imagination, marvellous to our kind of people, the cold whites”
Mark Twain about Kumbh Mela
8 - 25 February 2013, Allahabad, Bodh Gaya, India
On 10 February – the main bathing day of Kumbh Mela - at 3 a.m. I left the camp with other people in order to see the parade before sunrise. We crossed the Gange with a small boat while hearing religious Hindu chants. The river was lighted up by fires that allowed the atmosphere to be magical and nearly unreal.
At the parade before the sun rose possessed and screaming nude men ran towards the river by shoving everybody on their way: they were the naga babas.
After seeing them I started returning to the camp.
On my way back I realised that the crowd was really immense. For kilometers only human beings were at sight while heavily armed soldiers tried to keep the control over people.
At some point, I found my self in an increasingly swelling and panicking crowd. Scared, I did not know what to do. There were camps around at whose gates the panicking mob was pushing. People from inside kept them away by hitting them with sticks and pushing at the other side of the gate.
A man from one of those camp for some unclear reason allowed me to enter and so I was safe. But the crowd suddenly bashed the gate and entered the camp.
Then panic spread also inside with people running everywhere and the security of the camp trying to keep the control over the situation with brutal manners, although they were much kinder with me and the other few foreigners.
I tried to run away toward the other side but I was blocked and put inside the tent of a baba, where nobody could or dared to enter. He, amid the chaos, acted as nothing was happening: he was calm and kept gently smoking his ganja, while people were dying outside. The whole situation was unreal and frightening.
I waited there some hours until the situation calmed down.
Many people died that day. Some because of similar situations of panic. Some others – especially elderlies – just let themselves go, happyly passing away at such a prestigious religious event.
I finally managed to return to my camp. After few days I moved to the rainbow camp that eventually I had to leave because of heavy rain.
On 16 February while it was still raining I jumped on a bus that in about four hours brought me to Varanasi. The vehicle was designed for approximatively forty people. But we were at least one hundred on it. All the people were wet, sneezing and couching. The crowd was so thick that I could not even move my arms. And the driver kept the crackling music so loud that I could not even hear my thoughts. The music and the constant beeping of cars and of the bus was driving me literally nuts. I somehow managed to ask the music to be turned down and I felt almost moved when he even switched if off.
Varanasi was also overcrowded so I had to leave the following day for the quiet town of Bodhgaya, the place where the buddha attained enlightenment.
In this part of India – likewise at Kumbh Mela - extreme poverty was evident. At Kumbh Mela I realised that I had never seen so much misery concentrated in one place. Lepers, beggars and a seemingly infinite number of people living on the street crowded the festival.
At Kumbh Mela and Bodhgaya my mind tried to escape from the reality. The difference with home was just too big. I became aware of my own limits. I became aware of how much I was alien to that context. My mind fantasized about being back home in my comfort zone.
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| Buddha enlightenment's place |
However I decided to stay. I do not like to leave things unfinished. In order to really learn from an experience you have to go through it completely.
After few days in Bodhgaya I took a train that brought me to Jodhpur, to the other side of the country, where a vipassana meditation center was waiting for me.
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