'Water, by nature, is divine'

The Mahakumbh may be over, but the questions and debates surrounding it are yet to end.

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There are questions such as if a holy dip actually washes away all your sins and takes you along the path to heaven straight away, let alone giving you immortality.

There are also questions whether the apparent opulence and media hype over the Mahakumbh actually makes any sense.

Padma Bhushan Sri M (who was born as Mumtaz Ali into a Muslim family on 6 November 1949 in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala), a spiritual teacher, social reformer, educationist, author and global speaker, has answers to these questions.

For Sri M, who led the 'Walk of Hope' in 2015-16 from Kanyakumari to Kashmir spanning 15 months and 7,500 kms across 11 states of India, touching more than 10 million lives, it is a journey that continues.

He speaks to Ritwik Mukherjee of The Statesman from his YogaDham akhada at Prayagraj.

Q: What is the special significance of Kumbh or Mahakumbh?

A: They say that in the early Puranic history when Samudra Manthan happened, and the Asuras took the 'amrita' and left, and they had to get it back from there, some amrit spilled over and fell in four places.

I mean, this is what the Purana says.

And one of the four places is Prayagraj; the others are Ujjain, Nashik and Haridwar.

These are the four places.

So, the Kumbh is celebrated in all these places.

It is called Kumbh because of the Kumbh in which the amrit was carried.

It's also called Kumbh because here it is like a big cauldron.

Then came Adi Shankar Bhagvatpada, who decided that this should go on in all four places.

So he organized this for the first time as a Kumbh in which he said, first it will be near a holy river, where people can go and have a dip.

Now Ganga, Yamuna, and Saraswati, which they say is underground (we can't see), became a venue.

This is the concept.