Your Ad Here

Trip to Varanasi aka Banaras aka Kashi: Chapter 5: Part 7: Ganga Aarti on the occasion of Dev Deepavali- Kartik Poornima -Ganga Mahotsav 2009

There was no place from which I could take the photos. The only option was to lift the camera, pull out the display and start clicking one by one.

Here is a video of the Ganga Aarti:

You can check the crowd in these pics:

After the aarti, there was a full chaos. Some people wanted to go, some people wanted to stay. They started pushing each other and after some time I could see the scenes of disaster. A lady was crying, she wanted to go out of the ghats desperately. Some children were suffocating. A guy in front of me was looking as if he’s going to fall right to my face. I packed my camera and tried to get out of the crowd. But the effort was in vain. I was pushed back in. I thought the best way was to stay calm and make sure that I stand. If any one falls, it will be over for him. The best way to survive in a stampede is to stay calm, be focused and never ever fall. Make sure you hold something, either someone’s hand, shoulders, something that will make you steady in the event of a push. Then, after ten fifteen minutes there was an announcement that people should leave the ghats as the aarti is over. And after that announcement eventually the cops came in to action. They made the way and let people go out of the ghats. After half an hour I got out, and bought a water bottle, drank half of it and then called my brother. I explained to my brother about what it was like and he said that he knew about all this and didn’t want to get stuck up there. But I said to my brother that the experience was something I can’t forget. It was a great one. After that we went to Godowlia to have some snacks.

Email This Post Email This Post      Print This Post Print This Post [Slashdot] [Digg] [Reddit] [del.icio.us] [Facebook] [Technorati] [Google] [StumbleUpon]