Condensed in time and space: Sonepur Mela

A few hours before I was to leave Sonepur, I went to meet Vishwanath Singh, who at 93 is the oldest surviving freedom fighter in town. I wanted to hear him talk about Sonepur's volatile political environment in the pre-independence years. Instead, he said, "Mela ab kamjor ho gaya hai" (the mela has grown weaker). This was one of the few clear sentences that the senile man had successfully summoned, and he said it with a tone of finality. But I had heard this from too many mouths during my stay, and it appeared little more than a sentimental adage of a dying upper-caste man..This notion was less apparent to me on the first day, though. Arriving from Patna as a first-time visitor to this ancient pilgrimage site, I had been strolling around, bemused, trying to make sense of the multitude of traditions here, all the while jeering at the contrived attempts at branding and promoting the site. The Bihar tourism department had – along with an event management company from Delhi – strewn posters across important points at the mela, each with a garish, verbose quote..On one of the posters sat a pristine gold Buddha against a pink horizon. The quote, for which ample space was reserved on the right side, read, "Bihar: The fountainhead of the first republic of the world." But here too – as much as anywhere else in Bihar – a calm, quiescent Buddha didn't fit into the cacophony of the hundreds of loudspeakers from the sectarian kirtan mandalis which populated the mela on the first day, all desperate to outcry each other. Local politicians spoke copiously of how cultural and historical branding would help us 'preserve' our heritage. Government stalls sang paeans to the incumbent. Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) stalls hawked 'new' commercial products..Sonepur is located at the confluence of two rivers, the Ganga and the Gandak, in west Bihar, 27 km from Patna. Something between a village and a trifling small town, it is quiet and insignificant for most of the year. In the month of November, however, the place starts bustling with preparations for this ancient mela. It opens on the full moon of the month of Karthik on the Hindu calendar, when Hindu devotees gather for Ganga-snan, a holy dip at the confluence. This is followed by a month-long mela, traditionally popular for its cattle fair, somewhat grotesquely known as the 'largest in Asia'..My hotel room overlooked the railway line that goes to Gorakhpur from Hajipur, cutting through Sonepur on an old, imperial bridge that splits the town into two neat halves. On the left, at the tip of a U-shaped road, is the main temple of Hariharnath, where bathers offer water to the god. On the right is the Angrezi Bazaar, generally quiet, and on one of its corners is the old, imperial Dakbunglow. The mela is spread over both sides, and bordering the mela are the cattle fairs, with spaces demarcated for each one – 'Haathi Mela', 'Ghoda Mela', etc. Then, at the very centre, are the 'theatres', making themselves conspicuous. So too are the government and FMCG stalls, the circuses, rides and handicrafts..Perhaps this ghost-slaying enterprise would have looked ludicrous anywhere else, but the ambience of that cold, foggy, full moon night – the inundating crowd, the harsh din, the smell of marijuana – gave it a certain authenticity..By the afternoon of the full moon, all roads leading to Sonepur were closed to vehicular traffic, which had given way to a colourful human flood moving swiftly towards the town: men and women, sadhus and saints, people of all social distinctions, with gunnysacks on their heads and children clutching at their waists. This crowd, a local shopkeeper told me, came mostly from dehaat, the surrounding rural districts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and was punctuated sometimes by a few blonde or non-resident Indian faces, almost all of them carrying mammoth cameras. On reaching the confluence, they dispersed in all directions, hurrying to find a place where they could spend a few nights. A bath in the holy water would follow the next morning, then some feasting and shopping at the mela for a day or two before they headed back home. As the evening progressed, the mango groves became a sea of men and women asleep on makeshift beds of straw, their bodies wrapped in blankets. Many slept inches away from the elephants..Around midnight, on hearing a group of men singing to the drumming of a dholak, I peeped through the crowd to see a ghost-slayer practicing his craft on a woman, who was violently shaking her head before a smoky, incensed fire. I only had to walk a little farther to hear similar rhythms and see other men and women shaking their heads, all of them here to drown the evil spirits in their bodies at the holy confluence. Perhaps this enterprise would have looked ludicrous anywhere else, but the ambience of that cold, foggy, full moon night – the inundating crowd, the harsh din, the smell of marijuana – gave it a certain authenticity..The 'largest cattle fair' in Asia In Thiruvambadi Thamban, a Malayalam action thriller released early last year, the hero's family is involved in trading elephants in Kerala. The film's climax sees the hero heading back home after purchasing an elephant from the Sonepur mela. The elephant fair has always been Sonepur's singular attraction, distinguishing it from other popular Southasian melas. I had seen photographers following the elephants everywhere, sweet-talking the mahouts into posing them for a nice click or two. Later, I saw some of those pictures under headlines proclaiming 'Sonepur mela inaugurated'..In reality, however, what happened in Thiruvambadi Thamban wasn't possible anymore. Over the last few years, conservation laws had rendered the sale of elephants illegal. The laws also made it much more difficult to obtain no-objection certificates for taking the elephants to other states – most notably Assam and Kerala. And while such legislation had affected trades in other animals and birds, none was as badly affected as the elephant trade..Accounts from the 19th century report that on some years as many as two thousand elephants were brought to Sonepur for sale. That could perhaps be explained by the needs of the time: the elephants were used in British cavalry regiments, were in high demand among zamindars and high imperial officials, were used to haul timber and wagons for the expanding Indian railways, and also served a multitude of other commercial and religious purposes. Gradually, their numbers in Southasia diminished, initially through hunting for 'gentlemanly pleasures' by the British, and then as a result of industrialisation, deforestation and, especially in the last few decades, poaching for ivory. By the time the government enforced its plethora of wildlife conservation acts, their numbers had already plummeted to an all-time low.