We managed to start leaving Kolkata by 10.30 AM on the 13th, but did not really get out of town until near noon. The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, was in town and so many of the usual roads were closed and what was open was choked with diverted traffic. We finally arrived at the town of Kakdwip (see map from last post; town across the river at north end of Sagar Island) about two o-clock only to find that we had missed the tide by barely a half-hour and would now have to wait until eight o-clock. The big, main ferry could not land at the dock with the tide out and a smaller one was completely beached on the mud, still tied to the jetty.
Tiwary (left) and Julian contemplate the meaning of "missed the ferry."
Bit of a tangent:
This low tide was actually unusually low, and reporters I talked to later said that locals had not seen tides this low for at least a decade. Locals and reporters believed or had been told that such an occurance was "because of the tsunami," however I turned up this interesting piece in the
January 15th Calcutta Telegraph off the Reuter wire service about a phenomenon called "syzygy," an alignment of planetary bodies that was causing unusually low tides in Venice. The planetary bodies involved are the sun and moon and NOAA provides a nice
explanation about how this phenomenon works.
Recently here in India everything has been about the tsunami, but I think that in this case we can debunk the immediate connection. The effects of a tsunami do not continue to affect tides this long after the event, except for where the motion of the tectonic plates or erosive force of the massive wave generated served to
change the topography or elevation of the earth's surface so that tides can access areas they could not before. It also appears that changes in both land and sea floor topography, elevation changes, and/or the mass movement of large amounts of sediment from the initial earthquake and wave(s) can cause changes in currents that will eventually change the areas that tides can affect.
So, yes the tides may have been affected by the tsunami, but probably not this far north and it is more likely that it was the effects of the syzygy.
Okay, lesson is over, sorry for the diversion.
The tide was low, we had missed the boat and so I wandered around the thronging crowds, ate at a roadside stand, chewed some
paan and read my book in the car while we waited. In trying to describe the scene at Kakdwip, my first inclination is to liken it to the parking lot at a Grateful Dead concert or maybe the campground of a bluegrass festival.
A line of buses for the pilgrims parked at Kakdwip.
The smaller ferry sits beached on the mud as the sun sets.
Simple village people from clear across the country who have never left their hometown have made a journey of nearly a month in some cases to get to the mela. It's like the country bumpkin hitting the streets of New York for the first time. In a curious turn of events the touts and hawkers were more interested in conning their fellow Indians than me, pushing straw hats, sandalwood, curios, coconuts, conch shells, incense, chai, food and all things under the sun at them. Buses packed with pilgrims crowded the town and groups of people, many looking distictly confused or harried, wandered around or standing clumped together. The police with their
lathi (a nice stout stick) were everywhere, keeping an eye on things, controlling the crowds and mostly helping completely lost village people figure out what was going on.
Patient pilgrim.
Pensive pilgrim.
Not every vehicle is allowed on the island, but through the grace of Julian's connections and diplomacy, he received a special permit for us to take the Scorpio SUV-thingy onto the island. Most of the pilgrims have to take a ferry, which is different than the ones used for vehicles and still accessible during low tide. While we waited these mendicants shuffled along with their belongings and boarded their boats.
Pilgrims boarding their ferry.
We boarded our ferry after dark and arrived at the other side only 20-30 minutes after leaving, a very fast ride for all that waiting. There, crowds were again assembled and buses choked the docks and roadways around the water, taking on passengers to drive them to the south end of the island where the town of Ganga Sagar awaited. Many also walked, or took rickshaws, and these groups would loom out of the darkness in our headlights as we all headed for the same place.
At Ganga Sagar a brightly lit, vast and well-laid out city of temporary structures built from bamboo and reeds had sprung up to support its population of what turned out to be 2
lakh pilgrims (a
lakh is Indian for 100,000). This number was actually down from previous years, when the mela can attract over 3
lakh. The tsunami had scared many from coming anywhere near the sea or had devastated their homes, making the journey a low priority.
Police with their lathi against the backdrop of the metropolis that is Ganga Sagar Mela.
These natural-material "Club Med" structures, as Julian dubbed them, housed not only pilgrims, but the military, police, firemen, doctors and medics, information centers, VIPs, and other individuals, such as us, who could afford or arrange such lodging. India, the land of the have-everythings or have-nothings, was in effect as usual here and most of the pilgrims were sleeping on blankets in the sand. The government did provide many of them with simple little A-frame tents made of rushes and bamboo, but most had tarps and blankets. Clean, chlorinated water was available and pit toilets provided good sanitation. The infrastructure of this mela was actually quite incredible and highly commendable. Wide, well-lit avenues separated each little "sub-division" and good lighting for the night-time was everywhere. There was also good security, somewhat elevated in fact due to a threat being made by a Taliban splinter group in Pakistan threatening to terrorize the event.
Another view of one of the busy main streets during the day.
Overview from an observation tower looking north, so the water is directly behind your point-of-view, maybe 200 meters.
Our lodging, for I shared a room with Julian, was a 3 by 5 meter rectangular room with a thick bamboo frame. Woven grass mats covered a floor that was sand underneath and our doors were bamboo with woven mats lashed to them. The walls and roof of the structure were of another type of mat made from a thinner type of reed or grass, where the long, flat individual blades had been carefully lain one next to each other and then stiched at either end to create a very flexible, moldable building material. This type of mat usually came in an about 2.5 by 3 meter size and was the main material used all over the fair grounds. Used to construct free-standing walls with bamboo posts or folded in half for the pilgrims' A-frame tents, it was the basic building block for everything here, along with bamboo, bamboo, bamboo!
Tiwary (right) and Raja (background) tuck Julian in for the night on his rush-padded wooden cot.
Our lodging had the rectangular, roofed main room and then another open-aired but fenced space of equal size and shape set right behind it. Here was just a natural sand floor and that had our spigot with running water, bucket and dipper for bathing, and a typical Indian ceramic squat-toilet set in a square of cement buried in the sand. A pipe ran from the toilet to a pit in the sand behind our wall where the waste collected unseen, to buried later. The roof extended over the front of our rectangular main room to shelter our entranceway, which was a grass-matted hallway, parallel to the long axis of our room, with a low, half-wall that had an opening at one end. We shared a common wall on either side of us with lodgings just like ours and a set of at least six were all joined together in a line to make our "appartment block."
View from our "bathroom" looking down the rows of other rush and bamboo houses on our "block."
Another example of the bamboo and rush architecture, here some huts around one of the many fire-fighting reservoirs positioned about the fairgrounds.
The beach and the laping waves of the Bay of Bengal were 200 to 400 meters from where we were, depending on the tides, and all day and night long pilgrims came and went to take their holy dip.
Bathers in the Bay of Bengal. The thin, dark line in the distance that appears to be land is actually masses of people stretched out as far as you can see along the shore.
More bathers bending over to reach the water. The line of flowers behind them are from the pujas, cermonies, performed by the bathers.
A closeup of the remains of a puja (or several), which includes marigold flowers, incense and burning oil lamps.
This woman has a small rake and walks aong the shore raking the areas where people performed their pujas, hoping for coins that are sometimes left along with the other offerings. This is in no way viewed disrespectful, simply a way of things, one offering going to one in need, perhaps.
What is the meaning of this holy dip? Why is this event held every year on January 14th? Why is it held at this particular location? This is India, and so for every hundred people you ask, you will get a hundred answers. I will try and generalize for you.
On one hand, the event celebrates
Makrar Sankranti, the change from one month to another within the concept of the of the
solar calendar. There are 12 months in the solar calendar, one for each sign of the zodiac, and the changes of month are when the
ecliptic, the arc that the sun scribes on the celestial sphere as viewed from earth, moves from one sign to another. The position of the ecliptic's path is determined by noting the "last constellation of the zodiac to rise ahead of the Sun, or the first to set after it"
(Stern, 2004). Another simplified way to understand this is to think about a line drawn from the earth through the sun and out the other side. Whatever zodiacal constellation the line intersects at that time of year is the particular month.
Click image for new window with enlarged view. Woodblock print by Albrecht DÜRER (b. 1471, Nürnberg, d. 1528, Nürnberg)(Other examples of his prints). This is a geocentric drawing, so the sun's path is the outside circle and the earth at the middle. Signs of the zodiac are arranged on that outside circle. Draw your imaginary line accordingly.
To Indian sages the change on January 14th is called
Makar Sankranti. In Hindi one interpretation of
sankranti is "to change directions" and
Makar is the sign of the zodiac Capricorn, so here the path of the sun is moving from the sign of Sagittarius to that of Capricorn
(Acharya Satyam Sharma Shastri, unknown date; Swami Shivananda, unknown date). This means that the days are slowly lengthening and appears to be a celebration of the fact that winter will soon fade, leading to warmer days, a sort of "New Years" celebration, if you will (same reference as above).
The significance of the physical location of Sagar Island has to do with Hindu mythology. There was once a great king, King Sagar (or Sagara, as he also called). He had two wives. One gave birth to 60,000 sons (!), the other to only one. The horde of 60,000 were great warriors. The other lone son went on to continue the dynasty.
The king also had a horse, or maybe 100 horses, depending upon the version you read. As part of a sacred ritual, the king would release a horse to be followed by his horde of sons and if the horse returned on a journey from around the world, this was a good thing. Now, either he released one horse and although his 60,000 sons were following it they lost it, or, alternately, he was on his 100th horse release and the horde lost track of this final one. The main fact is, the horse got lost.
In reality, a capricious god had spirited the horse away and hid it. When the 60,000 searched high and low they found the horse deep in the caves of the underworld. In the process of extracting the horse they either disturbed or attacked a god-like individual, Kapila Muni (alternately called Vasudeva), who was mediatating in the area where the horse had been left. Kapila Muni appears to be an equivalent lord of the underworld like Hades. He was annoyed and simply burned all 60,000 of the sons to ashes with a single gaze of his eyes. Don't disturb people while they are meditating, folks.
The king was distraught, and sought to find a way to reincarnate his sons, or offer salvation to their souls. This can alternately be interpretted as allowing them to spring back up in the flesh as they once were, or, more likely, simply allow their souls to return to the wheel and enjoy reincarnation at a later time.
In pleading with Kapil Muni himself by either the king or one of his descendants, it was found that reincarnation of the 60,000 sons could be done by putting their ashes in the waters of Ganga, a goddess whose physical manifestation on the earth was the river Ganga.
It is important to note that Ganga was not present on the earth at this time. Through the lamentations and pleading of what appears to be multiple generations of the descendants of King Sagar, the gods relented and Ganga flowed to the earth. The flowing of Ganga to the earth is another story altogether and involves the matted dreadlocks of Shiva and the mountains of the Himalaya. You may research this yourself.
So, Ganga flowed. The actual ashes of the 60,000 sons had been lost all this time and by following the river to the end they were discovered as the water flowed over them, so freeing their souls. A sea is said to have sprung up there as well, to celebrate this event, and so the Bay of Bengal was formed.
Now, show this summary to any Hindu and you will be told how wrong I am and how much I missed or that it wasn't like that at all, but, that is how I heard it during the many interviews Julian did, and, besides, the Internet said so, too:
Amitabha Mukerjee, IIT Kanpur professor and
UP Portal web page.
Julian interviews a sadhu.
Back to the thread of the story, now.
We arrived well after dark, finally found someone official who could show us where our hut was, spent some time wandering, finally had dinner and next thing we knew, it was almost two in the morning! Passed out and thank goodness for the earplugs I always carry. Generators ran all through the night and starting at 5 am the mela-wide loudspeaker annoucement system started up and did not relent until around 11 at night. Mostly requests for so-and-so to come find their lost member of the family or for officials to move from one place or another to do something official.
Regarding the lost family members, we talked to many people - - police, pilgrims, officials, and Raja and Tiwary, and discovered that it is common practice to try and abandon unwanted family members at this event! Many of these people who come only know the name of their town, not even the state it is in or its relative location. Old people, children and unwanted wives are routinely left here. They are collected at the end of the mela and taken back to Kolkata where attempts are made to find their homes or family. In many cases, it is a lost cause and these people are on the street or in shelters. Horrid, but true, apparantly, as heard from several independent sources.
Officials in the announcement tower trying to find places for lost people.
Awoke shattered the next day, the result of a lot of car time, going to bed late and constantly waking up, for some reason. Not to mention the loudspeakers starting up supper-early, which was quite noticable even with the earplugs. A few dozen cups of chai later I was ready to explore and assist Julian with the interview process.
James after many cups of chai.
We wandered the shores, wading in the warm, salty water that was filled with pilgrims, scattered flowers and coconuts. The offering of coconuts is also auspicious, although I don't know why and I'm not going to diverge for another bit of cultural edification.
One I will diverge for is the practice to holding onto a young cow's tail while the owner of the cow chants a blessing over you, for which you pay a few rupees. Apparantly this is another check-mark on the list of "getting to pass go" and head for salvation.
Man fresh from bathing, grasping cow tail and receiving blessing.
A woman (right) receiving another tail blessing, the head of the young cow visible just under her and the priest's hands.
My favorite image of the mela will always be of the young boy I saw chasing his "cash cow" that had broken lose and was running amuck on the sand, deftly evading attempts to capture him.
Fatigue hit me hard and I retired for a mid-day nap while Julian decided to go for broke and have a full swim in the warm waters while the tide was up. I wish I had decided to stay awake and do the same, because after that the tide went out, way out, and did not come back in until after we left the next day. The water wasn't as appealing then. Oh well. We will have to hope that wading in the holy waters was enough for my redemption. According to some "just the sight" of certain holy waters or "even a drop" is sufficient. Good for me.
incomplete beyond this point . . . still under construction!
After the nap I joined Julian for an interview with some of the local press who were interested in what he had been doing on the Ganga since October. This interview has been published by
The Statesman and is, as usual, full of interesting errors and misquotes, including the mis-spelling of Jullian's last name. Ah well.
We then found out we were to be granted an audience and interview for Julian with one of the four holy seers of the Hindu religion. These four seers are located at different geographic locations through India and this particular one is
One of these four seers is currently under investigation for involvement in the murder of one of his temple workers. His processing in the legal system of India has shook the other seers into realizing they are not above they law, even if the majority of Hindus revere them and follow their lead in all things religious.
The seer.
to be continued . . .
