Tuesday, July 22, 2014

The Confluence

The politics keeps changing its name to Prayag, then Allahabad, then Prayag, then back to Allahabad. The Allahabadis couldn't care less. It doesn't change the pace of their easy life, doesn't give extra limbs to their standard ambitions, doesn't make them any more or less of the Hindus and Muslims they have been their entire quiet lives.
Sangam had always given her the answers. "Where the waters meet" she recalled the Sadhu's words. She went to the banks. It was unusually quiet. Her grandmother was saying her evening prayers. A few other souls were praying to the confluence to bless them. The Mahakumbh vibrated with chants and devotion of millions of people from all over the country. Washing their clothes and sins in the same silent waters. And the water goddess embraced them all, her beloved children coming for redemption and salvation or for the final rest.

She put her feet in the freezing waters. Strange what urgent devotion can do to human beings. Millions take their holy dips here not minding the coldness, not minding the filth, often religiously contributing to it. But faith is ever triumphant. Nothing happens to the devotee, except when stampedes happen.
The waters have got little to do with it.

7 comments:

  1. Beautiful. Only a man can make simple thing complex. And only a human being can see the simplicity in the complexity, :)

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  2. hmmm yes true, nature I think always works for the good of the species inhabiting the planet. its the mankind that makes all the problems ..
    Bikram's

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    Replies
    1. :) "Everything is beautiful that comes from the hand of Nature. Man meddles with it and it becomes pernicious."

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  3. The God(s) isn't (aren't) at fault if we name him differently and fight if my appellation is better than yours, or my God more divine than yours. But then, faith should have been a well thought decision, and not urgent, much like politics.

    Cheers,
    Blasphemous Aesthete

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