Attention Is All You Need
A morning in Kumbh
“BEEP BEEP!”
My heart skipped a beat; the blankets felt suddenly too heavy. I peeked out from my blanket.
“BEEP BEEP!”
Went my alarm at 4 AM. Put to sleep by loudspeakers humming religious jingles in the name of ‘Ram’ the previous night, I woke up alone in my tent situated in the heart of the Kumbh mela. While I had gone to sleep, the mela was buzzing with energy through the night. Out of habit and still deficient in sleep, I snoozed the alarm and tucked myself back in.
“BEEP BEEP!”
My alarm insisted again at 4.30 AM. Fearing the shame of not living up to my decision to go for snaan (holy dip) early in the morning, I finally got out of the cozy comfort of my blanket fortress - one over me and a couple manning the outline of my mattress - in peak Northern winters. The couple of hour long window just before the first light of the sun is considered an auspicious time for such activities. ‘Amrit snaan’ it is called. Grabbing a towel and change of clothes, I headed out of my temporary tent settlement to join thousands of other pilgrims headed towards the Triveni sangam. We moved like a human river towards the Triveni sangam where Ganga and Yamuna meet, and the mythical Saraswati is believed to join them from beneath the Earth. The same tectonic and climatic activity that gave birth to the glacial waters of Ganga and Yamuna had claimed Saraswati millenia ago, leaving only stories instead of water. Now, walking among believers, I felt the weight of those stories becoming real.
The freezing temperatures during early hours of winter days had ceased to catch up to me. Dressed in just a cotton t-shirt, I kept walking unwavered in what could be termed as an insult to the cold. The sangam was 5km away from where I was put up. I crossed the pontoon bridges, then walked east along the sandy bank until the Ganga’s dark-blue current kissed Yamuna’s lighter flow, their waters merging like old friends.
The density of people kept increasing as I walked along the sandy shores of Ganga. While lakhs of devotees ran amok on the ghats, the anxious and impatient loudspeaker kept reminding us of the perils of a gathering of such a scale. Hundreds had gone missing by the time I reached the sangam point - where I could barely see my feet in the maddening rush.
Time ceased to flow as I stood there witnessing Ganga and Yamuna waters seamlessly merging into each other. Before I could set the wheels of reason in motion to understand why I was here, the energy of the place sucked me in and I proceeded to take a dip. With no one along to hold my belongings while I washed away my sins in the holy waters, I started looking around for trustworthy faces. I saw a group of boys from Haryana standing besides me.
“Who are these boys? Can I trust them with my belongings?” I thought, scanning their faces for any sign of ill-intent.
In a sea of thousand faces, no face stood apart. Would a thief look any different here? The absurdity struck me—in this spiritual gathering, I was clinging to worldly suspicions. I would either have to trust them all or no one. I chose trust. I stripped and handed over my clothes.
“What am I doing here?”, the golden existential words came buzzing into my mind as I faced the cold waters. I, who hadn't said a prayer in years, prepared to wash away sins I didn't believe in. I pushed the thoughts away. Analysis would only distance me from experience.
I dipped once but failed to submerge myself completely. I dipped again. This time every exposed molecule of my body got in touch with the dark waters.
Thanking the boys, I came out of the waters and started walking away from the sangam. Spotting a changing room, I quickly changed into dry clothes and went looking for a hot cup of tea. It was 5.30 AM. The sun had not yet risen and it was still dark. I wasn’t completely dry yet I wasn’t really feeling the cold. The river smelled of wet earth and faith. The piped jingles from the loudspeakers no longer annoyed me but intertwined with pilgrims’ chants in a strange harmony. Street lights installed every few meters kept the area lit like a bazaar but here currency had changed form. Attention was the real tender - not rupees. And as I paid deeper attention to my surroundings, something unexpected happened: my existence seemed to cross physical boundaries, fusing with the environment around me. For those moments, I was no different from anyone else there. The sensation filled me with an unfamiliar energy of abundance and giving.
Up a small hill, I could see the ‘Lete Hanuman’ mandir. Unlike other Hanuman mandirs which had Hanuman in the standing pose, this particular mandir had Hanuman in the resting pose - lying down on the ground. According to local legend, Hanumanji was resting on the banks of the Sangam after returning from Lanka. He was tired from his journey and rested there at Sita Mata's behest. I walked towards it, accepted a tika in the name of ‘Ram’ from a person who seemed to be giving it to everyone and joined the queue for the mandir. The moon was still visible in the sky over the Akbar fort which stood right on the banks of the sangam, sharing a wall with the mandir. The sun had started to come up from behind the horizon. With this added touch of history and politics to my morning, I proceeded to offer laddoos to Hanumanji and exited the complex to catch the sunrise on the banks.
On my way, I stopped at a thela (cart) for a cup of tea and a cigarette. Ram Ashray had come all the way from Mirzapur to set up a stall during Kumbh, hoping to earn a good amount of money for his family back home. He looked unsettled to me. He was out of water to make tea and the source was a few hundred meters away. Being alone at the thela, he was in a fix. I offered to take care of his stall while he went to get water but he didn’t seem convinced. What surprised me was what changed his opinion. He entrusted me with his belongings and money but double checked if I was capable of selling the right tea to the right person.
“Chhoti vali 10 ka and badi vali 20 ki. Yaad rahega na?”
He picked up his bucket to go fetch water as soon as I nodded my head in affirmation. For the next 10 minutes I stood there selling tea to people coming out of the mandir. I had gotten fully engrossed when I saw him coming, walking fast with a smile on his face. I gave him the hisaab (account tally), thanked him and started walking towards the banks, following the rays of sun shining in my direction.
As I walked towards the sunrise in order to make my futile attempt at capturing the serene calmness that the early morning air of the Kumbh carried, I gradually came to a realization. I hadn’t come here seeking spiritual awakening - a couple of days can’t get anyone that anyway. I had arrived to surrender myself to an experience made special by the beliefs of billions of people over thousands of years. The extremely rare planetary alignment further amplified the experience for the mathematician in me who chooses to believe.
In the growing light, I understood: I had come to give the rarest gift I possessed - my complete attention - and in return, I was taking back a sense of connection I hadn't known I was missing. In this massive gathering of humanity, I had found myself both diminished and expanded.
It was exactly as Mary Oliver had written, though I hadn't known it when my alarm first rang:
Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Hey!! You had me tearing up Siddharth! This is a very powerful essay. It will stay with me close to me.