One, two, three.24,000. The city engineers thought they had plotted a watery equation that would win an Archimedes nod of approval.Many number-crunching hours were spent searching for a wet answer to rebuilding Nasik’s holy bath tub for the Sinhastha Kumbh Mela. One sadhu spends ‘‘five to seven auspicious minutes’’ in the royal bath at Ramkund, they calculated. ‘‘We try to pull them out in two minutes, they don’t listen,’’ they mutter. Confident with that estimate, the civic body poured Rs 34 crore into Ramkund to squeeze in 24,000 rollicking sadhus an hour — an explosion of religion in five-feet water.Farther away along the ghat, paved with new anti-skid surfacing for slippery feet tangled in wet sarees, the bathing ghat was expanded from 500 m to 2.1 km so 12 lakh devotees per hour can take the pious plunge. But the river can change course of the best-laid plans.Less than 48 hours before the Sinhastha Kumbh Mela burst upon Nasik with the power of 12 years of pent-up anticipation, the skies burst and the Godavari rose, half-immersing the temples at Ramkund. As Ramkund waters rose from the normal five-feet height to a season’s highest of 15 feet, a plucky television reporter simply rolled up her jeans to wade right in for that one minute of a great Kumbh story. Inside the shiny blue walls of the Ganga-Godavari Panchkothi Purohit Sangh office by the river bank, a worried priest was frantically calling up the weathermen at Pune while cops scolded women for changing wet sarees in the office corridor. ‘‘Weather reports said the rains will stop soon. How will the sadhus bathe if the floods don’t recede?’’ asked Pandit Sudhir Poojari, Kumbh Mela Committee member and chief priest of Nasik’s Kalaram temple. The few women who dared to dip in, clutched the stone bank unwilling to let go. Elsewhere as sadhus methodically emptied bucketfuls of rain from tents at Sadhu Gram, Nasik Municipal Corporation engineers who gave Ramkund a make-over Kumbh confessed to nagging doubts.‘‘If the floods don’t recede, the nearby dams at Gangapur and Alandi will be full beyond capacity,’’ whispered one highly placed official. That could drown some mammoth bathing estimates for the auspicious dates in August, and bathing access will be ‘‘restricted.’’Long before Ramkund was a crowded, noisy pilgrim centre not very different from the teeming temple towns dotting India, some nectar spilled from the skies when the Gods and demons had quite a fight. So when Jupiter enters Leo’s constellation, bathing at Ramkund is believed to wash away your sins. In 1991, during the last Sinhastha Kumbh Mela, Ramkund was a 400-sq metre bath. Only 5,000 could splash in every hour.The over-worked Nasik engineers have multiplied its size five times to 2000 sq metres. Stone-paving cleverly hides the irritatingly modern look of new concrete. Chemicals are being doused to kill algae and local swimmers have been coaxed into Jeev Rakshak or life-guard duty.‘‘On shahi snan days we will try to control water level to five feet,’’ says Sunil Kunhe from the civic engineering department with a hesitant smile.If only the rain gods would listen. Satish Shukla, chief of the Ganga-Godavari Panchkoti Purohit Sangh insists he is sure they will. ‘‘The dharmik show will go on as planned.’’
