Every few steps, the roads are adorned with snapped (or lost) slippers and shoes, a broken bag strap or two. Look up, and you will spot a riot of yellows and reds in the distance—Kumbh devotees from all over India wearing auspicious colours and walking home with their families, communities, even entire villages in tow. Old-timey megaphones strapped to light poles blare devotional songs dedicated to Lord Shiva, the deity worshipped on Mahashivratri, also the last day of the Kumbh Mela this year.
Although the mela is held every 12 years across Ujjain, Haridwar, Nashik, and Prayagraj, this year it was designated a ‘Maha Kumbh’. Scholars and believers say a rare planetary alignment made this the most auspicious Kumbh Mela in 144 years. There is some debate on the religious accuracy of this claim and the Kumbh Mela of 2013 also claimed to be part of a 144-year cycle. But, what cannot be debated is that the Kumbh was a massive opportunity to do business, especially for residents of this year’s host city, Prayagraj.
Yet, in the final days of the Maha Kumbh and the immediate aftermath, the city and its people became a study in contrast. The chaos near Sangam on the southeastern end of Prayagraj set a festive mood for 45 days across the city and its satellite towns, including Naini, Jhusi, and Phaphamau. But daily life remained disrupted and the mela closed on a tired city and an exhausted people, keen to get back to their everyday routines.
Business unusual
Leader Road, also known as Station Road, is important to Prayagraj for two reasons. One, it is the main road leading to the city’s biggest railway station, Prayagraj Junction. It is also close to the Civil Lines Bus Station, a hub of Uttar Pradesh state buses from nearby cities. Two, this road is a pharma wholesaler and distributor centre. So much so, that hotels in the area, such as the one I stayed at, mostly cater to travelling salespersons of pharma and healthcare companies.
On the penultimate day of the Maha Kumbh, this road was thick with the debris of passing pilgrims making their way towards Sangam or back home to the railway station.
Barring a stray scooter or two, there were no cars in sight and all the shops were shut, except a chemist here and a tea shop there. Both ends of Leader Road were blocked for the mela by high walls of yellow police barricades and blue metal sheets. You could only walk to the station on foot, or commute if you had a ‘UP 70’ registered vehicle and proof that you lived in the area.
After the stampede in January that killed at least 30 people and another at New Delhi Railway Station that killed 18, the police presence in Prayagraj had intensified. One could find police personnel stationed on every major and minor route through the city to Sangam.
At Leader Road, you could only enter the railway station after showing a confirmed ticket of an imminent train to a police officer. Entry gates were assigned based on your train’s destination. Loudspeakers across the road repeatedly warned pilgrims to enter only from their assigned gate.
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When I arrived, large groups of pilgrims were napping with their luggage on Leader Road and its bylanes, waiting to gain entry to the station. Ordinarily, they would have been napping in the station’s waiting rooms or platforms.
Although the shops were closed and there were no signs of local life, fly-by-night stalls were doing brisk business on Leader Road and the adjoining Grand Trunk Road, which cuts through Prayagraj and Sangam before proceeding east towards Bihar and West Bengal.
The action on the Maha Kumbh’s final day was entirely at Sangam, as last-minute stragglers and celebrities alike rushed to get a dip in the Ganga before time ran out. Singer Udit Narayan, for instance, was on the flight I took from Mumbai to Prayagraj on 25 February taking mid-air selfies with fans; he was photographed later that evening taking the Holy Dip.
In contrast, the rest of Prayagraj wore a deserted look during the mela. Two of its busiest institutions—Allahabad High Court and Allahabad University—were closed for the days leading up to Mahashivratri. Nyaya Marg, usually abuzz with black-coat lawyers, was largely empty as were the bylanes of Katra Bazaar, one of Prayagraj’s biggest markets, near the University.
Both ends of Leader Road were blocked for the mela by high walls of yellow police barricades and blue metal sheets.
At Civil Lines, where the city’s poshest stores and malls are situated, the roads were largely empty. Several smaller restaurants and street food stalls were shut altogether. The iconic Indian Coffee House, haunt of university students, local political leaders, and ‘intellectuals’, was also only half-full on the evening of the 26th. “The coffee house has been empty all these days,” said the manager. “Because of the Kumbh Mela. The locals can’t come because of all the crowd, traffic, and these barricades. Anyway, today is Shivratri so most people will be at the mandir,” he added.
“It has been tough on us locals,” one of the serving staff members added. “It is very difficult to get anywhere, even to get to work and to get home.”
Barred and barricaded
Barricades came to define life in Prayagraj for the mela days, eventually taking a toll on the city’s residents. Main roads and bus stands were cordoned to for all traffic, leading to massive jams on arterial roads including the Grand Trunk Road. Pilgrims on foot competed with local e-rickshaws, motorcycles, scooters, and large SUVs from out of town for narrow road space. Locals complained that police barricades could pop up in unexpected places.
“It is difficult to tell where a road may or may not be barricaded,” Mithilesh, an Uber driver from Lucknow driving near Prayagraj airport, told me. “You can see if there is traffic in Google Maps, but you won’t be able to tell if the road is blocked or not.” The only thing everyone knew was that all roads near Sangam were pedestrian-only.
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One of the biggest sources of traffic in the city, the Prayagraj Bus Station, was shut entirely for the mela. Outstation buses were dropping off passengers outside the city instead, in areas like the Bela Kachar Bus Stop, 10km north of the city across the Ganga.
“No, Bela Kachar is not a bus stand,” one e-rickshaw driver corrected me. “It is a big nothing. It is an empty ground next to the Ganga where no one goes, not even stray dogs. The government just called it a parking lot and stopped all buses there. Now it is up to the travellers how they come to Sangam.”
This presented a big business opportunity for cabs, bike taxis, and e-rickshaws, which ferried pilgrims in a hurry into the city from its outskirts and then back in time to catch their bus home.
Estimates vary depending on who you ask, but everyone in the business of local transport seems to have made good money. For instance, a short trip in a shared e-rickshaw costs ₹10-20 per person; during the mela, drivers charged passengers anywhere between ₹250-800 per person to get to Sangam or back to a bus stop, two drivers told me. They declined to be named.
“Yes, we made money, but these bike drivers made even more than us,” one of the e-rickshaws drivers said. “Bikes have been charging up to ₹800 per person to take people to Sangam. People prefer them too because of all the barricades, the bikes can navigate traffic much better.”
Boatmen plying the Sangam waters may have made the most money. Taxi and e-rickshaw drivers all made tall claims of how much boats charged pilgrims: from ₹5,000 per person to lakhs per boat. In the UP Vidhan Sabha this week, chief minister Yogi Adityanath claimed one family with 130 boats made ₹30 crore in 45 days.
Winding down
Prayagraj police began dismantling the barricades on 27 February, the day after the Kumbh Mela ended. On-foot pilgrims disappeared overnight, as did the mounds of trash they had left on the city’s major roads. The Sangam pedestrian area was calm, with a relative trickle of visitors heading to the river. Meanwhile, across the city, the morning rush of traffic and people swelled on the main roads, which had been blocked for weeks. It was as if Prayagraj had been holding its breath for 45 days. Now, it finally exhaled.
Some tents and businesses planned to stay open until the first week of March, such as the Digital Maha Kumbh Experience, a special light and sound installation on the history of the mela.
“This is the first time I am going to my coaching class in a month,” Pooja, a 20-something student living in the Leader Road area, told me as we shared an e-rickshaw towards Civil Lines. She has enrolled in a coaching centre in the neighbourhood for the Staff Selection Commission or SSC exams, meant for recruiting mid- and lower-level government employees. “So far, I have been doing all my classes online. There was just no way to travel across the city,” she added.
Prayagraj’s buses were missing from the roads in the heart of the city during the mela; some were commissioned at Sangam to ferry the police, sanitation workers, and volunteers working for the Kumbh.
“It has become impossible to navigate anywhere in the city during Kumbh,” the e-rickshaw driver quoted above told me as we drove from Sangam to Allahabad High Court, near the Civil Lines area. He declined to be named. “I took lots of passengers from Sangam to Bela Kachar and other drop-off points outside the city. But I had no way of telling my wife when I would reach home because the city was choked with traffic.”
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Nyaya Marg and other roads near Allahabad High Court were packed with parked vehicles, tea and snack stalls, and hundreds of lawyers and their staff members, many carrying armfuls of case files. Nearly every vehicle parked in a 2km radius was marked with ‘High Court’ and ‘Advocate’ on the number plate. “Business has been quiet during the mela, but today everyone is back to work,” a tea stall owner opposite the High Court told me.
Back on Leader Road, the traffic was back, as two-wheelers, e-rickshaws, small tempos, and large trucks took over both sides of the roads. The pharma distributors and wholesalers were back in business and towers of cardboard boxes containing everything from diapers to iron supplements lined the footpaths. Bigger vehicles were being unloaded, and smaller ones being loaded with goods to be taken to shops across the city and neighbouring areas.
The flurry of activity had shifted from the pilgrims on the road to the salespersons in the market. Railway station announcements had stopped, the barricades were gone, and police personnel stationed in the area began leaving in twos and threes.
Meanwhile, I made my way to Sangam, the heart of all the action for the last 45 days. Pilgrims were still making their way home from here, a trickle of groups walking the routes to the railway station.
Some small groups stopped to ask for directions, rushing to take a dip even after the auspicious period was over. One police officer, still making crowd control announcements, reprimanded the driver of an Ertiga; he was trying to drive as close to the ghats as possible: “Will you drive straight into Gangaji?” he asked in Hindi.
Latecomer devotees made their way to the Ganga past vast cities of abandoned tents and toilets stretching out for miles. All that was left of this massive, historic gathering were acres of garbage being collected in mountains of black bags and tossed into lines of waiting trucks.
All across the Sangam area, massive tents were being dismantled while poles were neatly being stacked up to be taken away. One man clad in a wet towel peeked out of a tent dedicated to Doordarshan staff covering the event. Temporary toilets were empty, doused in white bleach powder, while sleepy looking staffers scrolled on their phones at tents owned by brands and in the massive flea markets near the area.
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Some tents and businesses planned to stay open until the first week of March, such as the Digital Maha Kumbh Experience, a special light and sound installation on the history of the mela. “This is nothing,” said the security staffer ushering in our group of about 20 visitors. “On most days, we were managing three-four groups of 300 people each in one go.” Other installations, such as a massive 12-foot Mountain Dew bottle in a field, stood gathering dust.
Yet, the lure of the Sangam remains. At the Quila Pakka Ghat, every steel railing was covered in drying clothes belonging to the groups of pilgrims taking shelter on the stone steps. As the Kumbh Mela folded up around them, the believers lined up to wash away their sins.
