{"id":8687,"date":"2010-01-20T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-20T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2010\/01\/20\/kumbh-the-spirit-and-the-spectacle\/"},"modified":"2010-01-20T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-20T12:00:00","slug":"kumbh-the-spirit-and-the-spectacle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2010\/01\/20\/kumbh-the-spirit-and-the-spectacle\/","title":{"rendered":"Kumbh: the Spirit and the Spectacle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hindustantimes.com\/rssfeed\/uttarpradesh\/Kumbh-the-spirit-and-the-spectacle\/Article1-498332.aspx\">www.hindustantimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>HARIDWAR, INDIA, January 20, 2010: Ram Prasad slowly walks up the steps of Har-ki-pauri, one of the holiest Hindu sites on the banks of the Ganga in Haridwar, Uttarakhand. It&#8217;s the 37-year-old Mauritius citizen&#8217;s third trip to the Kumbh Mela.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel quite at home here and am experiencing the kind of spiritual bliss I&#8217;ve never felt before,&#8221; says Prasad. &#8220;I&#8217;m also carrying Ganga jal (holy water) back to my home country.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>For this young professional, a visit to the Kumbh Mela is not just a trip to the land of his ancestors, it also gives him an opportunity to &#8220;connect with the people, places and culture that are our very own and that we greatly miss back home&#8221;. The sea of devotees also fascinates Prasad&#8217;s Vietnamese girlfriend, Loc, 32.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I enjoy it (the Kumbh) more as a great sight, a grand colorful spectacle rather than feeling connected with it spiritually,&#8221; she says. David Drassalto, a 35-year-old Swiss journalist, sits on the bank, silently watching the swift currents of the Ganga &#8212; and people. The sheer scale of the festival made him come to Haridwar. &#8220;Such a unique and huge fair doesn&#8217;t happen every day,&#8221; the agnostic says with a smile.<\/p>\n<p>Ketut, 35, an Indonesian Hindu homemaker, has come here with her husband to &#8220;take a holy dip in the Ganga in the hope that we attain nirvana&#8221;.<br \/>Ravindra, a Nepalese theatre artiste, draped in saffron-colored woolens and stick in hand, is here to attain nirvana too. &#8220;I&#8217;ve come here in search of a guru who can show me the path to attain nirvana,&#8221; says the 27-year-old. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: www.hindustantimes.com HARIDWAR, INDIA, January 20, 2010: Ram Prasad slowly walks up the steps of Har-ki-pauri, one of the holiest,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}