Mahakumbh- Will it be rinse-and-repeat?

Mahakumbh: Will it be rinse-and-repeat?

Some celebrities during the Kumbh

You know how I have taken my habit and skill of worrying to such a level that whenever an award for worrying is instituted, my claim as the first and unanimous recipient stays uncontested.

The latest reason – a Kumbh returnee, soaked in piety, in a sharp voice not bothering to hide his disdain, questioned me how I qualify as a practicing Hindu even though I did not take the proverbial ‘holy dip’ in the Sangam in spite of living just a few hours from the sacred site.  

No, somehow, it did not trigger worry about my being a Hindu because all of us have our own system of belief.

Bathing or dubki (taking a dip) too, is a matter of belief and thus, does not give anyone the right to question. The good thing is that followers of every religion have some such notion so nobody should be stupid enough to raise eyebrows at anyone else.

My stomach is in knots- the official numbers say nearly 56 crore visitors not only from India but from other countries too, cleansed their sins in the holy river’s waters.

I am not concerned how they came up with such exact numbers, or how more than one third of India’s population descended on the small city not exactly equipped for this unique social distancing experiment, not even whether the water is clean.  

I have a different heap of worries e.g., has anyone wondered about the sociological changes that might take place following the Kumbh?  

Will the sin and crime rate go up because more than one third of our population has washed off their old sins? Does it give the mischievous dark characters a chance to rinse and repeat?  

Will the number of holy men and women not merely in our country, but other countries too, go up staggeringly after people have migrated to the ‘sin-free’ list?

We believers live in this constant effort of protecting ourselves from not doing anything which results in paap lagega (earns us sin).

Did the people who went out of curiosity or as tourists, to witness the event or to take selfies, also earn punya?

In the tragedies occurring during such sacred events who receives negative marking -politicians, officials, victims? What is the status of the families who lost their dear ones?

Did not even a single soul accidently take jal-samadhi (immersion/burial in water/river) in the Ganga during the six-week event?

Are we Indians procreating so fast that our infrastructure is always insufficient?

I am going light-headed thinking about economy vs morality.

The airlines earned whopping sums in price-surge following the crazy jump in demand. Will this be counted as paap?  

The railways did not jack up ticket prices, remember India is a welfare state and railways does not work as a profit-earning department, but who bears the weight of the ‘sin’ for tragedy?

This is another level of entrepreneurship!

Was the act of small-time sellers of wares making money from the pilgrims during this time of latter’s necessity, immoral?

Were the boat-owners who generally got a measly Rs 500 for a trip, but now agreed only after being handed out Rs 20,000 for the same, wise entrepreneurs or low-level sinners?

Or the hoteliers who promised five-star luxury for staggering tariff, and sometimes did not provide even hot water?

Did every person who turn someone into a celebrity whether for the colour of the latter’s eyes or the way they flicked their hair after the dip, earn some virtue brownie point?

And have the doctors/hospital authorities who tended to the injured following the stampede earned punya? Their contribution shall forever remain unmatched for not letting the casualty toll creep up by even one beyond the official figures announced.

Are the efforts of host city students, office-goers, shop-keepers, workers who struggled among the mammoth crowds to reach their own destination to do what their day demanded, paap or punya?

How does God’s paap-punya balance sheet work? Does He have some Godly intelligence to counter the artificial kind being used by humans or merely uses calculus/algebra/geometry/trigonometry/statistics to cancel out sins against this bathing?

What kind of marking system does He use for those who took the dubki more than once? Or for the officials posted at the venue, in and around the city to ensure the event went off otherwise uneventfully?

Should we be thankful to the genius who calculated that this happens only once in 144 years?

Prayagraj residents like Mani’s cousin Atul bhaiyya (brother) and Padma bhabhi (sister in law) and several thousand such unsung event managers of this spiritual extravaganza, have received, hosted, fed, taken to the safest spots, arranged for the holy dip, showed around the glitzy stalls, brought them back from the venue, dropped off, - relatives, friends, relatives’ relatives, friends’ friends, relatives’ friends or friends’ relatives, in the last month and a half. Is it near-Everest level of mehman-nawazi /atithi-satkaar (hospitality) or of punya-kamayi (earning virtues)?  

Isn’t it good I did not go, otherwise I would have committed the sin of pushing some of you to insomnia following existential dread under the crushing weight of worries?

Now wait for another 12 or is it 144 years, in the hope of getting some answers. So long Allahabad, sorry Prayagraj! My salute to you!

                                                                                               -Anupama S Mani