Author: Santosh Singh
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: November 25, 2012
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/priest-as-saviour/1035851/0
Nearly a week after 18 people were killed in a stampede during Chhath festival celebrations at Adalat Ghat on the Ganga in Patna, Mahant Manohar Das is engaged in an animated discussion with fellow priests in his rest room at Thakurwari on the ghat. Das argues how adequate police deployment and making the route one-way after 6 p.m. could have prevented the stampede. It’s evening and Das has to start preparing for puja. He applies a tilak on his forehead, adjusts his white turban and leaves for the Jagannath temple at Thakurwari.
Das, who hails from Pipra Bazaar of Chhapra and took over as priest from his father Tribhuvan Das, has completed 22 years at the temple. In all these years, his routine has barely varied. He wakes up at 4 a.m., bathes and performs the early morning puja. Devotees start coming to the temple at 5.30 a.m. He accepts offerings of devotees and also performs special puja for some of them on request. His morning session is over by 10 a.m. when he goes back to prepare food at his one-room home in the Thakurwari premises. After preparing food, he again bathes and prepares to offer bhog to Lord Jagannath. Some local devotees gather in the afternoon to take prasad. After 3 p.m., he gets another break but has to look after the cleaning of the temple. The evening session begins at 6 p.m.
November 19, the first day of Chhath puja, was a special day for Das, just as it was for the lakhs of devotees who thronged the ghats to offer arghya to the setting sun. Three makeshift bridges—two of bamboo and one of iron pipes and sheets called Pipa Pul—were built over a 150-metre nullah for the devotees to reach Ganga ghats.
At 6 p.m., Das had just returned to the temple after offering arghya and was preparing for the daily evening puja. From Thakurwari, he could witness a sea of people surging on the ghats. Though the sun was fast sliding down the horizon, devotees were still coming to the ghats while many had started returning. “All of a sudden, we saw a bamboo bridge of Mahendru Ghat, barely 200 metres from Adalat Ghat, collapse. A few people fell into the nullah. Many people started taking the Pipa Pul. The two bamboo bridges were built side by side. One was used for entry to the ghat and the other that collapsed, for the exit. In the meantime, electricity went off, leaving a crowd of over one lakh in pitch darkness.”
Now the crowd was using only the Adalat Ghat bridge that connects to a narrow 10-foot lane for exit to the main road, Ashok Rajpath, near Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH). “As people were still coming to the ghat, they ran into those going back in a 400-metre-long and 10-foot-wide lane. There was a rush after the rumour that an electric wire had fallen down,” says Das. It was time for him to do something. He made a quick announcement to more than 1,000 people in Thakuwari not to leave and stay where they were. “Some people started knocking at my locked door. They wanted some space to get out of the crowd. There was no time to get keys from the other room so I broke open the door and took in as many people as possible,” he says.
But the priest had a bigger task awaiting him. When his neighbour, Shyam Chaitanya, told him that several people had been crushed in the stampede, Das joined him and others to take the injured, mostly children and women, to PMCH. “It was chaos all around. We had to take less-frequented routes to get over a dozen victims to the hospitals. We immediately came back to Thakuwari to take care of the crowd taking shelter here,” says Das, showing a tin roof below which over 200 people had taken shelter.
Das says the police arrived at the main road by 6.30 p.m. but found it impossible to reach the spot since the crowds were pressing from both directions. For almost an hour, it was left to Das, his friends and fellow priests to handle the situation. Chaitanya says Das gets the credit for stopped over a 1,000 people from leaving the temple, which prevented the crowd from swelling further.
Das’s morning and evening puja and aarti have not been the same since that day. “Every time I look at the Ganga, I remember that evening of November 19. me. I have not slept peacefully since that incident. My prayers now are for the speedy recovery of those injured in the stampede. I want all of them to return to the temple with a smile,” he says.
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