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Before she waded in the water to take a holy dive among the teeming crowds during the largest religious gathering in the world, Draupadi Devi reached her blouse and gave her husband a small pocket to save.
Inside, there was a shift of paper with her phone number scribbled on it, so she would do so if they separated into the tangle of members and luggage which is Kumbh Mela, a Hindu festival held all Three years in one of the four cities in India.
The version of this year of the event is called Maha Kumbh, or Great Kumbh, because it coincides with a celestial alignment which only takes place every 144 years. Thus, the multitude of pilgrims, faithful, seers and ascetics is even greater than usual – and even easier to get lost.
After her bath, as they crossed the crowd, Ms. Devi lost sight of her husband, Umesh Singh. As much, with him, was his cover.
Confused and frightened, Ms. Devi, 65, found herself at the lost and discouraged center of the festival, which is part of the immense temporary infrastructure which meets the earthly needs of the faithful as they execute rituals intended to purify the soul.
More than six weeks, from mid-January to the end of February, more than 400 million people are expected to attend the Maha Kumbh, according to government estimates. It takes place in Prayagraj, in the northern state of the Uttar Pradesh, where the Rivers of the Ganges and Yamuna meet. The Hindus believe that a third mythical river called Le Saraswati joins the other two in a sacred confluence.
The fortune metropolis built for the event is on 10,000 acres of land temporarily claimed by the Ganges, whose waters are retreating during this period of the year. THE “Ephemeral megaite”, “ As Harvard researchers have called it, includes hospitals, pontoon bridges, nearly 70,000 reverbers, thousands of toilet toilet, 250 miles of steel roads resting on the bed of the lemonish river and Tents ranging from modest to luxurious.
While bathers can go away without sin, they can always make a bad turn. This may explain how Ms. Devi found herself to seek help from lost and melted volunteers.
They had little information with which to work with. Her husband was bigger than her and two more years, said Devi. He had tanned skin and was dressed in a sweater in the same green shade of mint as his scarf.
She did not know her phone number – that is why she had written it on the scrap of the paper, the one she had not recovered after her bath.
“They said he would come,” said the volunteers. “What else will they say?”
The state and central governments spend hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure the safety of pilgrims of Kumbh Mela, a company whose immense challenges became clear last month when 30 pilgrims died in a stampede as they rushed To bathe in the river.
The security center is crucial for the security effort and its 10 offices in the field. They are a place of hope and despair, because the faithful appear every day by thousands of people to report disappeared people and, sometimes, lost objects.
Participants can use the public addresses system to make their own announcements in their own language. One evening, near the bathing sites, it was a non -stop frenzy – people looking for lost brothers and sisters, parents, cousins, children and spouses. A person was looking for their abandoned army identity card.
Mani JHA, the center project manager, said the largest number of reported cases came from sites where people make their bath rituals.
“When the faithful opt for their holy dive, there are naturally so much rush,” said Mr. Jha. “When they go out, there is a rush of new devotees, so they have to move.” In an instant, people can separate. Others fall and let themselves be left in the middle of the disorder of orphaned slippers and thrown shirts.
Many pilgrims come from rural areas and are not used to large crowds. Some are poor and do not have their own phones. They “sometimes start to panic and cry” when they try to understand “where to go, who ask, what to do,” said Mr. Jha. The police and volunteers of non -profit organizations console them and bring them to the closest lost and offbeat office.
Once someone reports a missing person, workers feed as many details as possible in a computerized system that uses facial recognition technology. The information is shared with the police and other offices and has also announced the public address system. Those found are installed in a room lined with cardboard beds. This year, they were given by Amazon and offer its logo in good place.
In 2019, when a smaller event known as Kumbh “half” was detained in Prayagraj, the lost and found center treated 39,000 cases, Jha said. Most have been resolved, he added.
“Meetings are very emotional moments,” said Mr. Jha. “You become yourself emotional yourself when such a situation occurs.”
One recent morning, Tara Chand Bhat and his wife, Shanti Devi Bhat, were looking for her mother. They had separated by looking at the religious parades.
An entire day has passed. The Bhats slept on the ground as they were waiting for news. The following afternoon, the lost and finished workers informed the couple that Ms. Bhat’s mother was in a detention area. She was there all morning, waiting for her family to bring her home.
A few days later, Sudesh Sharma, 58, punctuated around a bathing platform for four hours before being directed to the lost and deceased center with her husband. They had lost track of his two sisters after their holy dip. The sisters of Mrs. Sharma had only their bathing clothes – no money, no phone – and they did not know her phone number.
Ms. Sharma was impatient to find them. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said, adding, “The government spends so much money, can’t help people?”
When Sant Ram, 56, arrived at the lost and discovered center, he was only dressed in his underwear. He too had lost track of his family after his sacred bath. The rest of his story was also familiar: his wife had his bag, and he contained his phone and money.
However, he knew his son’s phone number. A police officer lent him a phone and his family was soon to meet him. The officer also gave him a body jersey to put.
Ms. Devi, the pilgrim who had left her pocket with her husband, Mr. Singh, was united to her after about five hours.
She had given lost and discouraged volunteers the name of her village and her former chief. They found it. He had her husband’s nephew’s nephew, whom he called. The nephew then called Mr. Singh and directed him to the center.
Singh said his meeting with his wife had been delayed. Although he gave her official name to announce on the public address system, she had only provided her nickname to lost and discouraged volunteers, and they could not match both.
“I scolded him to put me in difficulty,” said Singh. “But whatever happened, it happened.”
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