By Aashish Mishra
Panauti, Jan. 20: Had it not been for the latest wave of COVID-19, the city of Panauti would have been celebrating this Mela this year throughout the Nepali month of Magh. “Thousands of people from as far as India would have thronged the Trivenighat (in Ward No. 7 of Panauti Municipality) to take a dip in the holy confluence,” said a local man Chandra Deula.

For the 63-year-old, the pandemic not only robbed the city historically known as Ashmapur of the chance to celebrate its iconic festival grandly but it also robbed it of its life. “Once every 12 years, Panauti would get a chance to host everyone, from the highest-ranking government officials to the average person wishing to gain merit to even the gods from heaven,” Deula said.
Last Mela in 2010, the President, the Prime Minister and the former king visited the city to pay homage to its divinity. It is also believed that all 330 million gods also descend from their respective abodes and stay among the residents of Panauti for the festival.

Panauti is an extremely important religious site, equivalent to Allahabad (Prayag Raj) of India. That is why it is called the Prayag of the north and the Makar Mela the Kumbha of Nepal. The city is also one of the 166 pilgrimages listed in the Nepal Mahatmya, the legendary account of sacred places and deities of the country.

So pure is this city that people attain liberation simply by stepping foot here. “One need not enter the water or even revere a temple. Stepping one foot on the Trivenighat is enough to gain a lifetime’s worth of virtue,” Deula said. That is why the city is called Palati; ‘Pala’ means foot and ‘ti’ means to put.

As explained by Professor Gerard Toffin, emeritus research director at the National Centre for Scientific Research of France, in his book ‘The Religious City of Panauti: Makar Mela’ published last month by the Panauti Municipality, the town would have been abuzz with activity this month had the virus not reared its head. Devotees would have gathered at the Ghat early in the morning, bathed at the confluence, visited the Gorakhnath Temple at the top of Kunjagiri to offer water they would have brought from the confluence in the depression between their thumb and index finger, worshipped Mount Gaurishankar which is visible from the hill and prayed at Indreshwor Mahadev.

According to photographer Prasant Shrestha, a Panauti local and a collaborator of Toffin, the level of the mythical Rudrawati rises once every 12 years during the time of the Mela and water begins seeping out from under the Brahmayani Temple at the Trivenighat. This year was no exception. On Wednesday, he posted photos of water coming out of the stone-paved ground on Facebook.
Deula, who is a member of the caste group that “protects” the serpent deity Vasuki who resides at the Ghat to look after the city during the Mela period, said that this water indicated the presence of Goddess Parvati, as Rudrawati is an extension of her form.

“Let her holy presence wash away the coronavirus from the country just like the three holy rivers wash away sins of us benighted mortals,” he wished from behind a mask and a plastic face shield seated at arm’s length from this reporter.

How Makar Mela tradition started
Indra, the king of heaven, seduced Ahalya, wife of sage Gautam and daughter of Brahma. He defiled her in the guise of her husband Gautam and got her faultlessly cursed by her husband. Violating a woman against her conscious will is moral turpitude of the highest degree and Indra would not go unpunished for it.

For his actions, Indra developed a thousand female genitals all over his body. This was to be a mark telling everybody what he had done. His peers were disappointed, his devotees were disenamoured and most of all, his wife was hurt. Sachi, understandably, felt wronged. Her husband had cheated on her and brought dishonour to the couple. She could not even bear to look at him.

But he was still her husband and she could not sit idly by as he suffered. So she, along with Indra, went to Guru Brihaspati, the sage counsellor, for advice. At first he was angry but later, he suggested Indra and Sachi to go to the top of Kunjagiri, a hill standing at the confluence of the Leelawati and Padmawati rivers formed by a piece of Dronagiri that fell as Hanuman was flying with the mound to save Laxman, and repent. Indra repented in the name of Mahadev and Sachi in the name of Parvati.

Sachi’s devotion was so strong that it caused Parvati to take the form of a divine river – Rudramati – and flow from under the Kunjagiri Hill into the confluence of the two rivers today known as Roshi and Punyamata, forming the sacred site that acquired her name ‘Sachi Tirtha.’

Lord Shiva, too, pleased with Indra’s piety, appeared and told him to bathe at the newly formed Triveni (trijunction) to absolve him of his sins. Indra did as told and the female genitals on his body disappeared.

Jubilant, Indra established a shrine dedicated to Lord Shiva at the spot, thus known as Indreshwor Mahadev, and announced that those who bathed there would be cleansed of their sins.
And that is how the duo decennial Makar Mela started, wrote Dr. Suman Raj Tamrakar, a local of Panauti and head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at Dhulikhel Hospital, in the supplement published by this daily on Friday.