Back to the Mela

This is just a short note on a wonderful day. My Hindi professor, his wife and three other students hired a car and driver and went to Allahabad to the Ardh Mela. This was an entirely different experience from my earlier one. We headed out early in the morning and arrived at the check point where we had to leave the car and joined thousands of people walking to the Ganges. Large groups of people were traveling together with bundles containing dry clothes and provisions for their rituals. We walked past the saddhus' pavilions that I had visited on my earlier trip, down to the river's edge at the sangam where the Yamuna joins the Ganges and the Saraswati (?), a mythical river. We milled around for awhile trying to find a boat but the police were not letting the boats land for some reason and we finally found a space where we could get to the Ganges, my professor and his wife and two of the students took dips, while another student and I guarded the baggage. After the dips, everyone dried back and we walked back to the car, went to a restaurant in Allahabad and had beans, the restaurant's specialty, and then came back to Varanasi.

Those are the bare facts. There was something, however, about walking this distance with all these pilgrims, most in a festive mood, that was amazing. Almost all of the women wore brightly colored saris and ours was not the only stream. Moving streams of color were coming down the slope to the mela site as far as one could see in the distance. Then at the river bank, people gathered in small groups like ours and prepared to enter the river. The women took off their sweaters and other outer garments but kept their saris on. The men stripped to their underpants, sometimes wrapping a short cloth around their waist, sometimes not. Then they all head to the river, said short prayers, took a short dip, came back, dried off, changed clothes modestly, and headed back. There was something about thousands and thousands of people doing this simple act together and yet separately that was very moving. Very small children, very old people, and everyone in between, all bathing in the Ganges. If I hadn't been so sick this trip I would have joined them. Maybe next time.

We traveled to and from Allahabad on the Grand Trunk Road which I always like. There are turning it into a four-lane divided highway. Where it goes through towns, they just demolish the buildings far enough back to let the highway pass and then brick in the openings. It makes for some oddly shaped buildings and some very strange rooms.

I was up at 4 this morning and it is now six-thirty. The above words seem inadequate. I had a wonderful day.