While establishing the exact date and traditions of the Kumbh Mela at Allahabad is debatable, the sanctity of the confluence and the occasion of Magh Mela date back well over ten centuries. The Kumbh and Magh Melas are so regularly timed that they just seem part of the annual cycle of the Ganges to residents of Allahabad. And an electrical grid provides power for millions of pilgrims and news crews. Plumbing is buried in the sandbars dotting the Ganges. There, too, a gridded city plan is laid out. Image © Anthony AcciavattiĪ similar cyclical process takes place every year with the bathing festival Magh Mela at the Sangam, which, like the Kumbh, is held during the month of Magh (January-February). The middle map of each row is a summation of all four aspects. From left to right, the maps below each panorama show the cultivated land, roads, the location of settlements and the location of people at that time of year. Save this picture! Part of Acciavatti's diagram "Triveni Sangam: Celestial-Terrestrial Microcosm, 2006." The photographic panoramas show the same point at different times of the year, marked on the timelines to the left. It is ephemeral and dynamic, but it is not instant. While at first glance it might have the ephemeral qualities of a pop-up city, its deep structure is that of a carefully planned metropolis in an ephemeral and dynamic landscape. To make this happen, government officials collaborate with public health workers and akharas (religious orders, sects) to organize the physical layout of the temporary city. It is a methodically planned ephemeral city. It is impossible to standardize the plan of the city as the waters of the Ganges recede differently each year, depositing a different configuration of sandbars and edges. Yet how can an instant city possibly provide a constant flow of running water and electricity, a coherent layout of avenues and roads defining 14 sectors, 18 pontoon bridges, 38 hospitals, 30 police stations, 30 fire stations and 35,000 toilets? Given the months or years of planning involved to make the Kumbh happen, it is anything but an instant city or a permanent metropolis. Ganges Water Machine: Designing New India's Ancient River Then come reporters and camera crews from all over the world, who come to document the life of what must at first appear to be the world’s largest Instant-Mega-City: a temporary tent city with the major infrastructure of a metropolis.
Pontoon bridges stretch from one bank of the river to the other and pilgrims begin to arrive in January. A city grid is tattooed into the banks and shoals of the Ganges. After the deluge of the southwest monsoon (June-August), the waters of the Ganges and Jamuna slowly start to recede. Where these two rivers meet (and a third mythical river, the Saraswati), is known as the Triveni or Sangam, the most sacred site within Hinduism.Įvery twelfth year, the sleepy university city of Allahabad is transformed into a colossal tent city populated by millions of pilgrims for the Kumbh Mela (literally Pitcher Celebration). While the Jamuna, to the south of the city, runs deep and narrow, the Ganges, to the north and east of the city, runs shallow and wide. In the following excerpt from his book " Ganges Water Machine: Designing New India's Ancient River," Anthony Acciavatti recounts the history of this spectacular event, as well as the smaller annual Magh Mela - and explains why even though it is temporary, the huge tent settlement that supports these festivals is not the "instant city" it is often described as, but instead a microcosm of settlement patterns across the whole Ganges.ĭangling at the tip of the Ganga-Jamuna Doab, where the Lower Ganges Canal system terminates, the city of Allahabad overlooks the confluence of the Ganges and Jamuna rivers.
Sustainability and Performance in ArchitectureĪmong the many complex interactions between humans and water in the Ganges river basin, perhaps none is more awe-inspiring than the religious festival of Kumbh Mela, which every twelve years hosts the largest single-purpose gathering of people on the planet, with an estimated 2 million temporary residents and 100 million total visitors in 2013. The Future of Architectural Visualization
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