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| At the 'sangam' in Gangasagar |
Continued from previous post…
On the way to Bharat Sevashram Sangh itself, the signboard had caught my eye even in the crowd of signboards. It advertised various kinds of ‘gur’ (jaggery) and fresh date-palm juice, and at the end of the words, an arrow pointed vaguely towards a lane next to which the signboard was planted.
After dumping our backpacks inside our royal ‘hogla’ room, we had simply freshened up and left for a tour of the fair. There was no time to lose. As we stopped for tea right next to the signboard, I decided to explore the address of the delectable delights a bit. So, after tea, we walked into the narrow lane.
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| Date-palm 'gur' (jaggery) being made |
Towards the end of the lane was a playground to the left where several pilgrims were camping. When we stopped for photographs, the so-called sadhus (beggars actually, or maybe even fugitives) asked us for “something”—apparently their ‘modelling fees’. To escape, we gave one of them some money; immediately the others surrounded us.
Talking our way out of the fiasco, we asked around for the address of the ‘gur’ seller. Some villagers pointed at a nearby hut. There was already a crowd at the hut. Most of them seemed to be in no hurry to buy anything, but they ‘expertly’ tasted every food item they could find.
There was a ‘jhuri’ (wicker basket) full of top-quality ‘patali gur’. Date-palm ‘patali’ is one of the best forms of jaggery which is prepared by boiling the date-palm juice into a thick consistency and then allowing it to thicken into a solid mass. It’s one of Bengal’s traditional winter delights.
Deciding to buy the ‘patali’ the next morning, we asked when we could have some fresh date-palm juice. An elderly man and a young woman seemed to be the sellers. The woman said we’d have to come early in the morning. My companion offered to pay some money in advance so that she would keep some for us, but she refused. “It’s first-come-first-serve,” she said adamantly.
So, letting the obstinate woman have her way, we left for the fairgrounds.
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| People being fed for free by one of the religious organizations |
All the roads to the confluence were numbered. The one nearest to the Sangh was Road No. 2. These ‘roads’ were basically the spaces that had been left in between the rows of makeshift stalls and ‘hogla’ camps that had been installed. The ware that’s sold by the roadside is some of the most colourful stuff available in the world.
From coloured powder, vermilion, beaded jewellery, trinkets, seashell decorations, conches and metalwork to clothes, cane walking sticks and delicious-looking sweets, everything was being sold in the open. My companion bought some sweets that we call ‘pedas’. It’s usually a mixture of sugar and ‘khoya’ (milk thickened by boiling). This one had a strange taste. Finally, my companion figured out that it was sugar and ‘sattu’ (pulses roasted and powdered). He looked at the seller and said, “It’s trash.” The seller simply looked away.
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| The sea of people at the fair |
Everywhere, there was the familiar sea of humanity. We realised that even if we looked away a second, we lost each other in the crowd. Several times, we had to call up to find out where the other was. Every time, we had been only a few yards apart. It was little wonder that there were relentless announcements on the microphone for missing people.
Several religious organizations were distributing free food and free tea. There were serpentine queues outside these venues. Looking at our cameras, people mistook us for photo-journalists. And we did not try to correct them.
For a few photographs—which would hopefully find a place in some newspaper or magazine—all of them offered us free tea and food. I declined all of it politely. We could afford it; those who were in the queue probably couldn’t.
A volunteer started manning the line with sudden enthusiasm when I trained my lens on him—much to the dismay of the sleepy pilgrims. Some commented on our “brilliant cameras” (though mine is not even a DSLR); some asked us for their snaps to be taken.
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| Pilgrims camping in the open |
We explored the fairgrounds, seeing all kinds of interesting dwellings on the way. Some were triangular in shape, open on two sides. People crouched inside the smallest of ‘tents’, some smoking or sitting next to fires to keep warm (though we hardly felt the cold).
We tried to find our way to the Kapil Muni ashram, which was conspicuous because of its brilliant lights. But all roads to it seemed to have been blocked by the immensely talented security men who were manning the fairground. And yet, we could see a miles-long queue leading up to the ashram! No one seemed to know where it started. After a futile search, we sullenly made our way back to the Sangh.
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| An interesting 'tent' on the fairgrounds |
We had been given the option of having dinner at the Sangh. For that, we had to book coupons for (ahem!) Rs 10 each. Thinking we would eat and go to bed early so that we could wake up early the next morning, we had bought the coupons. The Sangh workers had said dinner would start by 8pm and be over in an hour.
We returned well before 8pm and realised that there was already a serpentine queue for dinner. It was our day of queues it seemed. We stood in the queue, believing dinner would begin at 8pm. After standing for some time, we heard that dinner would not be served before the end of the evening ‘arati’ (prayers with fire). But no one seemed to know when the ‘arati’ would end and where it would be done.
We were too exhausted to go out again to look for food. We were standing next to a temple on the Sangh campus, the steps of which were teeming with pilgrims who had found no other place to camp. Tucked under shawls, children were already fast asleep on the cold marble floor. There was no place to even place a foot on the stairs.
Seated on a podium, some ‘maharaj’ (holy man of the sect the Sangh follows) was lecturing the audience. He was giving a fiery speech on a controversial comment about India’s “growing intolerance” made recently by a popular actor belonging to another religious community. The audience clapped enthusiastically at the end of every sentence.
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| An illuminated Kapil Muni Ashram |
The ‘arati’ began after ‘maharaj’ ended his red-hot lecture. It wasn’t until 9 pm that the queue started moving. Apparently dinner was supposed to end by that time.
We got seats (on mats on the floor) after two batches had eaten their fill. And, at one go, some 100-odd people were being served. Food was simple fare—rice, a very watery dal, and a cabbage curry. After dinner, we had to take the leaf-plates outside and dump them in a huge pit.
Finally, after what seemed like an endless day, we could retire to our princely hut. We spread plastic sheets on the straw and rolled out our sleeping bags. The fair was on in full gear; apparently it never slept. We heard voices of people from everywhere, devotional songs, and never-ending announcements on microphones before we could drift off to sleep.
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| Sadhus take the holy dip at Gangasagar |
I had set the alarm for 5am, but woke up a few minutes before it could go off. And I woke up to exactly the sounds that I had heard before falling asleep. As I rolled by sleeping bag, my companion woke up. By 6am, as the sun was lazily making his way up the horizon, we were at the ‘sangam’.
The sea was still away from waterline as we had seen the evening before. This time, I got knee-deep into the water and started clicking. There were several photographers around, most probably professional. They made a funny sight—standing in the water with their pants rolled up to the knees, but with heavy jackets and woollen caps on to save them from the chill!
Cutting across the knee-deep water, I slowly made my way towards the east, keeping the rising sun in the background as far as I could manage. My companion closely followed me down the beach, not ready to leave me out of sight and waste precious time searching for me.
There was no dearth of subjects. But like Kumbh Mela, ‘sadhus’ are the most sought-after subjects for photographers at Gangasagar, too. Unfortunately, there was a dearth of the saffron-clad matted-haired men. So, when one such figure made an appearance, all the photographers literally pounced on him. The poor sadhu was visibly uncomfortable with all the attention he was getting.
After about 90 minutes or so, when we had reached the end of the beach, we turned around. There was some commotion a little up the beach. We went there to find that some important ‘maharaj’ had arrived with his entourage. As shutterbugs bore in on him—which he clearly enjoyed—I could hear his announcer declaring that the mat that had been placed on the beach was for their woman followers to leave their belongings on. “It’s not for the other ‘mothers’,” he said.
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| There was a serious dearth of photogenic sadhus. One made an appearance and all the shutterbugs pounced on him! |
As we made our way back, we tried to find the queue to the Kapil Muni Ashram yet again. Again, the road had been blocked from the beach-end. We tried to enter it through some of the bylanes, but all had been blocked. Finally, to my amusement, my irate companion declared, “Okay Mr Kapil Muni, we won’t visit you. You are not worth all this trouble.”
I even had a mild argument with a security man when he told a bunch of pilgrims to take a U-turn and go back to the beach to enter the queue for the Ashram. “Why are you harassing these people? That road is blocked; we are coming from there,” I challenged him. “Then you have to take the road from the other end,” he said. He obviously had no idea which end of the road was blocked.
We ate breakfast at a roadside eatery—deciding not to make the previous evening’s mistake by going back to the Sangh for food. I told my companion then that it would probably be wise if we tried to return home now.
We had originally decided to stay a day and return the next morning. But from the enormous crowd that was still pouring in from Kolkata, I felt getting back the next day would probably be even tougher. My companion agreed.
We went back to the jaggery place to get my ‘patali’ and hopefully some fresh date-palm juice. But the juice was gone. “I just poured the last drops into the boiling ‘gur’,” the woman said. So, with a sour temper, the two of us went back to the Sangh after I had bought the jaggery. We packed our backpacks in five minutes and braced ourselves for another torturous journey.
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| A woman washes her sari at the 'sangam' |
The buses, just like the previous day, had miles-long queues leading up to them. So we decided to head for the car stand. My companion was too weary now to trudge it out on foot. So we hired what is known in these parts as a cycle-van. It’s a big tricycle fitted with a cart (basically a flat wooden seat).
When we reached the taxi stand, my companion jumped out and dashed off towards a vehicle that was about to leave. Again, he managed to bargain the front seat for us. But this vehicle was on its way to Chemaguri, which is the jetty for ferries to Namkhana, which is further from Kolkata compared with Kakdwip. But the driver assured us that the queue would be comparatively shorter. And so, we went on our way to Chemaguri.
But we were yet to fully fathom the seriousness of the case. At Chemaguri, a 1.5km-long queue welcomed us. As I stood in the queue, my companion went to check if he could manage a quick passage for us. He returned after a while and said he had befriended a volunteer who had told him to bring “the lady journalist who was having trouble standing under the scorching sun (!)” so that she could sit under a shade.
“How many lies are you going about telling?” I asked him, alarmed. He had apparently said we were both photo-journalists. We would be in a terribly awkward and humiliating position if we got challenged. Anyway, I left with him, telling the person in the queue standing in front that we were going to have tea. We were challenged by a security man, too, but when we told him the “tea” story, he let us go.
The volunteer was still eating breakfast. Asking him to “do something” for us, my companion quickly added that he was paying for his omelette, even as the volunteer vehemently objected. “Will your omelette-bribe work?” I asked him, amused, as the volunteer left shortly. “The government is paying for their food anyway,” I pointed out.
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| An image of devotion |
“The path is blocked by the queue. I can’t take you through that mass of people. But if you can walk 1.5 km down this dry riverbed, we can get you on the ferry to Namkhana,” he said. The riverbed was okay, but I was worried that we would get stopped by the cops at the other end. Finally, he asked a man to accompany us.
As we ran behind the villager on the parched, uneven riverbed, he rattled off details that he hoped we would put in the newspapers. And I played my part of the journalist to satisfaction—taking photos and asking for totally inconsequential details. After all, I had done it for nearly 10 years.
At the other end, the security men let us pass, albeit with frowns. Thankfully, they did not ask for our I-cards; only word that we were the ‘Press’ was enough. In 10–15 minutes, we were in the ferry. My companion, his lies, and the bribe of an omelette had saved us at least four hours.
There was not much left of the journey after that. It took us some 40 minutes to reach Namkhana. From the jetty, my travel companion and I took a cycle-van to the train station and bus stand respectively, according to our convenience. And, we both reached our respective homes at about the same time that evening, within around 3 hours of leaving Namkhana.
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How to reach Gangasagar from Kolkata
- Take a bus from Esplanade to Kakdwip
Take a ferry from Kakdwip to Kochuberia
Take a bus or shared cab from Kochuberia to Sagar Island - Take a train from Sealdah to Namkhana
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| Women make some ritualistic drawings in the sand |
Take a ferry from Namkhana to Chemaguri
Take a shared cab from Chemaguri to Sagar Island
Take a shared cab from Chemaguri to Sagar Island
Where to stay at Sagar Island
Youth Hostel, Bharat Sevashram Sangh and several other ashrams. Book your accommodation in advance if you want to visit it during the fair. BSS is the best bet. Youth Hostel is booked for government officials. I also saw a government ‘nishulk yatri nivas’ (free tourist lodge), but I’m not sure of the facilities and where it can be booked.
Also read my posts on Kumbh Mela: