It is: 4:35 PM - May 16, 2008 at the Kumbha Mela.

The International tour operator Cox & Kings (C&K) has found itself in the middle of major controversy here at the Kumbh Mela. Influential maha-mandeleshwars who run well known akaharas here decided some time ago that C & K had broken many of the rules which groups pitching tents within the mela area are supposed to abide by.

C & K managed to get 12 bigha of land (about 7 acres) allotted to them for the ridiculously low sum of 300,000 rupees without going through the usual tender or auction procedure. C & K’s aim was to set up a premium tourist camp consisting of luxury tents within the Mela area catering primarily to the rich and famous. If press reports are to be believed we can expect among other famous personalities; Madonna, Richard Gere, Demi Moore, Sharon Stone, Pierce Brosnan and Robert De Niro to be turning up here sometime soon. They will require high quality facilities that only C & K can give them.

Nobody is quite certain how this issue came to be taken up, perhaps it could be the discovery that C & K were allegedly charging over $240 per night. A commercial enterprise making a lot of money catering for up to 600 premium tourists was bound to get some people pissed off. A number of Akaharas began to accuse the mela administration of failing to maintain the integrity of the mela grounds by allowing a commercial enterprise to operate here. They also accused C & K of supplying meat and alcohol to its guests, both of which are strictly forbidden in the mela area. The mela administration was told that if it did not shut down the activities of C & K, the akaharas would do it for them. To keep the Akaharas at bay, the chief mela officer issued C & K with a notice canceling their license, knowing that C & K would apply to the Allahabad High Court to prevent any action being taken immediately. In India as elsewhere, this is an expensive way of buying time. All this was happening before the first big bathing day Makar Sankranti on 14^th January. By 16^th January the matter was in India’s Supreme Court. Imagine the clout required to get the hearing pushed right up to the top so quickly. The Supreme Court requested that the petitioners appear before the Allahabad Divisional Commissioner on 18^th January.

Nobody really wants C & K out because there is too much at stake. The celebrities who are expected to stay at the C & K resort will give the MahaKumbh the kind of international exposure Indians crave. Channel 4 in Britain has a dedicated website on the Kumbh and 10-minute nightly TV coverage of the daily events here. They have 52 members of their team staying at the C & K camp. Other influential people are also staying there. Channel 4 is profiling a number of people including the chief administrative officer of the mela, Mr. Jeevesh Nandan who is one of the most powerful officials here. The mela administration has made a number of compromises to keep the Akahara Parishad happy. There is no scope in this article to go into all of the details because there are many forces at play here. Since the holiday resort story is the one on which the game is played, it is the one that gets written about and swallowed and so let us leave it at that. Whatever happens, ways are going to be found to drag this thing past the most important dates and then when C & K are good and ready to leave, they will.

Being a member of the public, covering the Kumbh Mela has felt good. At various points in the past few days I have deliberately stayed among the pilgrims and away from the journalist side of the fence where better views were to be had. Two days ago, while on my way back to base, I decided to walk into the Media camp and check out what was required to get accreditation as a bona fide mela journalist. Here is a list of some of the more interesting questions I would be required to answer to get a Kumbh Mela accredited journalist pass: husband’s or father’s name; professional experience in chronological order with salary details and total monthly emoluments; revenue of publication per annum; addresses of places of stay in the past five years. Well! I did not stay there long.

In the past few days there has been a lot of heat generated over the issue of photographing naked Naga Sadhus and women bathing at the ghats. Unflattering pictures which appeared in the papers have angered many. The Indian community watching Channel 4's mela coverage protested to the channel and to the Indian High Commission in London. All photographers will now be restricted from taking photos or video footage of women having their bath at the ghats and of Naga Sadhus. A number of TV networks including the BBC, ABC, CNN, Channel 4 and stations from France, Japan, Israel and Hungary were planning to present live coverage of bathing at the Sangam during Mauni Amavasya on 24^th January. A compromise is being worked out. Distant shots of bathing will be permitted, but no close-ups. Networks who are not happy with this arrangement might decide to stay away.

Channel 4 is probably finding it difficult to provide critical independent coverage of the mela. Their web site uncritically reproduces the figures the mela administration supplies them with for number of hospitals, police stations etc., without further scrutiny. Many of the mela administration’s figures are suspect; 75,000 latrines? My arse! Even a day’s general survey will reveal that this is not so. We need to look in greater detail at the logistics behind this amazing event. Events like these do not come very often. There is a lot to learn here. We owe it to people who are interested to give them a better idea of how an event like this can be put up and sustained. If we follow the facts-and-figures paper trail supplied by the mela authorities, we will discover, only too late, the wisdom inherent in the saying "the map is not the territory."  The receipts for what has been purchased and what actually appears on the ground are two entirely different things. Media! Wake up please.

Mauni Amavasya on 24^th January will be a very special day. Kumbhnagar’s population will mushroom to many millions. Fifteen million, twenty million, thirty million? We will have to wait and see. There are a number of ghats for bathing in, but most will prefer to bathe in the ghat at the Sangam. A large chunk of the Sangam ghat is already reserved for shahi snans of the various Akaharas. This leaves less space for the rest of the ordinary pilgrims. What happens should India’s Prime Minister Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee decide to turn up for a dip? King Birendra of Nepal is also interested in coming. The Dalai Lama says he, too, might turn up. This is the nightmare scenario for the mela’s security team. An act of terrorism here at the mela might at least make heroes of some of them, but providing security to VIPs like these and getting them to the Sangam with millions of pilgrims having to be re-routed – no thanks! A similar situation created a number of casualties in 1954. Mauni Amavasya is indeed going to be an interesting day.

Tony Fernandes is Zenzibar's correspondent at Kumbh Mela 2001 in Allahabad, India. You can contact him at tony@zenzibar.com