Mahakumbh 2013 – 3

Waking up on our last morning at the Kumbh, we already feel a sense of familiarity with our surroundings. The sun is shining brightly as if the rain had never been and the entire camp has been converted into a huge drying ground. Everywhere we see clothing, linen, towels strung out to dry and chairs, mats, shoes laid out under the blue sky to catch the sun’s welcome rays.

It is the perfect day for boating along the river and we are lucky to find our old boatman, who immediately stakes his claim to us and readily agrees to our terms. As we jump in, we learn that his mother needs a ride to the other shore and we are more than willing to accommodate her and her little boy – receiving a lesson along the way on the tribulations of being a widowed mother and the blessings of having dutiful children! We are almost family now and wave a cheerful goodbye as they alight with their bags on the crowded shore, where she will mind her bangle shop and pedal her wares to mela shoppers. We glide below an ancient fort, where the boatman shares its legend, and on past the crowded steps along the water’s edge. We can clearly see the line where the Ganga’s browner water meets the clearer Yamuna. We buy small plastic bottles from a boat-borne vendor and fill them with the holy water to take back - a Hindu home always has Ganga Jal, to use at births and deaths and weddings, indeed at every ritual. It is a quiet day as we wind down, return to camp for lunch, walk along the river bank, enjoy the pleasant sunshine...

Soon it is time for us to leave the river's bank and the faithful Pandey-ji will transport us out. We ask to be taken past the Allahabad University, alma mater to my older brother (also my companion’s father!). At first Pandey-ji resists, saying it will be too crowded and there are traffic restrictions, but when he learns it is a personal mission to find the past, he melts! I love this simple sentimentality of the small-town Indian, still untouched by the too modern and over-practical and I hope it never changes. The short visit is perfect and we are quickly surrounded by helpful hostel inmates, who are as excited to hear our story as we to tell it. We actually find and visit the very room my brother lived in. Forms are filled with his present coordinates, promises are made to stay connected and someone dashes upstairs to find a college magazine and Annual Day memento for us to carry back!

Then Pandey-ji drives us to a busy street for a quick dinner, before delivering us safely to the station. We tell him he’s the best and reward him and promise to attend his son’s wedding!  We are on the platform well in time to board our train and it is absolutely the topping on the cake to find we have been allotted berths in the only two-berth coupe! So, we travel in a tiny little private bedroom, complete with a closet to hang our jackets. The end to our journey is as perfect as its start and we are both conscious that the Mahakumbh will never come again for us. In some way, we are changed forever.