Day 8: Kumbh Mela, a World Within Itself!
According to the believers, thousands of years ago, the epic Sagar Manthan took place between the Devas and the Asuras. Several treasures came out of the sea as a result, the most valuable being the pot (Kumbh)of nectar that would make the drinker immortal. The Devas did not want to share the nectar with the Asuras, and thus Dhanavantri (one of the forms of Lord Krishna, and by extension Lord Vishnu) flew away with the Kumbh. The Asuras chased Dhanavantri for 12 days, and during the chase, Dhanavantri dropped some nectar. This divine nectar fell in the form of 4 drops at 4 different places; Haridwar, Allahabad, Nashik, and Ujjain. Ever since then, every 12 years, these fours places (in different years) host Kumbh Mela to celebrate the chase and the consequent victory of the Devas over the Asuras.
The mythological origin of Kumbh Mela is a disputed folklore, but this is a regular sight in Ujjain during the Mela. You can stop and ask any and they would narrate the entire story to you with a certain pride.
In May 2016, about 7. 5 crore people from all over the country and some lakhs of people across the globe visited Ujjain for the mela. So you can imagine the magnitude of this festival. Actually you cannot, no one can till they experience it for themselves.
Several movies have been made where the protagonist gets lost in the Kumbh Mela only to reunite with the family in the climax. As a kid, I used to think that Kumbh Mela is a dreaded place where people run around and trample on you and you get lost forever. I wasn’t completely wrong in my assumption
I spent 4 days in Kumbh, and those 4 days were filled with incidents that I cannot possibly imagine to occur anywhere else. I met countless people, slept through a storm and a stampede, was in a bus whose driver was threatened by a naga with a sword, sneaked into a naga initiation ceremony, and several such stories (I cannot believe it was just in 4 days!) and in the coming blogs, I shall detail out each one of them.
