Wild Mother

Photos by BBC

On the day before we are to take the bath at the Kumbh Mela, we discover that the town’s security situation has changed. Our guide, Mr. Parikshit Joshi drives us around the site so we can see what we are in for. The main ghat, Har Ki Pauri, will be inundated with sadhus and temple leaders, who bring their devotees by the thousands. We will be hiking toward Ashti Parvath ghat, directly south and across the Ganges River from where the sadhus will immerse themselves before dawn the morning of January 14th, the first bath of the months-long festival. Because of the need for high security in the region, 20,000 Indian military, state police, and the RAF, a rapid action force, has been brought in to deal with suppressing potential riots and terrorist threats. We soon learn that plans may change hour to hour, and that we will not know until the day of events what our approach to the site might be.

Mr. Joshi points to the long, fenced, narrow bridges and tells me that if the procession became too crowded they herd people onto the bridges and then lock the gates, sometimes for hours, until the bathers at the ghats move toward their homes and tents. My husband takes my hand. I have been claustrophobic for years. I avoid elevators, crowds and locked rooms. I close my eyes and listen for an inner voice I have learned to trust. Could I overcome my fear if this situation emerges? I look to the man sitting next to me, who I have been loving for three decades. Something beyond our intellectual understanding has brought us to the Khumbh Mela, and we want to complete the ritual, to understand something about why we have come. “Think you can do it?” my husband asks, and I nod, feeling safe knowing that neither of these men would allow us into a foolhardy situation. The holy bath calls to me beyond my fears.

Life sometimes sounds nonsensical when lived by instinct, those moments before too many thoughts arise. First impulse is the way we had children, and chose homes and healed cancer. As I come into the wisdom of an (ahem) older woman, I want more body-centered instinct and less mental chatter. I realize my inspirations are no Jesus on a naan, however, I consistently find direction from what arises in my imagination, and sometimes just by leaning into things. First impulse tells us to get to the Kumbh Mela at the beginning. Thus, even though we’d had rather a full day of Shakti Peethas and Shri Swaminarayan, we ask to leave the hotel at four in the morning, to be at the ghats when the sadhus are in attendance.

Pilgrims walk here for many days, often families carry one shared bag, wearing bare feet, or worn sandals. The weather is unseasonably cold in Haridwar, 4 degrees C at night, and so this is not an easy journey. The families save resources so they might come for a bath in their beloved Mother Ganga.

In the hours before dawn, we walk through the dark. Past the checkpoints no vehicles or bicycles are allowed, only those travelers on foot, and we walk down alleys so dark I cannot see the ground. People emerge from alleys and buildings, people come from everywhere, chanting, moving quickly in the blackness, no lamps or lanterns. Although I had prepared myself for what it might be like to be noticed as westerners -- we had a few days of acclimating to being the new ones in town -- I have no idea of the degree to which those effects are amplified at the Kumbh Mela. According to our guide, people coming from rural areas may have seen a western person in the media, and some have not yet seen one up close. And it is mostly the locals who have witnessed westerners bathe in the Ganga.

As we take off our jackets and Richard removes his pants and shirt, I become aware of the people around us, watching us while they make their own preparations. I walk down the steps into the freezing river just as I see my husband’s body fall below the churning waters. He holds onto the iron rail to keep his torso still for the current is strong. I lift my hands into the Mother Ganga and pour the stream over my head, my skirt flowing around me like a blood-red pool in the steel grey water. A glowing statue in the distance lights the heads of other bathers -- falling, rising, jumping, bowing, shivering, stilling.

I splash a river salutation. In my mind: Ganges! Ganges! as the loudspeaker blares instructions in Hindi. Over my body is flowing the ashes of the dead. Where we are standing in the River is the place of last night's puja, the ceremony we witnessed, with fire and flowers, and chanted by a son and a priest as they performed the last rites. I am swimming through souls. Something deep inside realizes a belonging I have never registered, like what Marabai has written:
“I came for the sake of love-devotion;
seeing the world, I wept.”

Before we leave the ghats, I ask for a moment to offer my gratitude at the place we took our bath, and as I bow and lift the water to my head, my lips, my heart, I become aware that a group watches my movements. My hair and skirt is wet from the dip an hour earlier, and my feet are bright red from the cold, and around my shoulders I clench a saffron shawl for warmth. I am aware of an elder man to my left, watching as I pray, and as I turn to follow my men back down the road we arrived upon, this old one meets my eyes and we nod to each other. What passes between us is something beyond language and culture. This poem of India: a Mother river, a long pilgrimage, a seeing in the dark.