In a dramatic turn of events, a resident of Prayagraj, aged around 60 years, who had gone missing after the stampede during Maha Kumbh on January 29, walked back to his own tehrvi (bereavement meal) on Tuesday. What was initially a mournful event became a festival very soon as the neighbors and friends celebrated his safe return. When asked why he had vanished, the man, who was known by the name Khunti Guru, shrugged, “I shared some chillums with some sadhus. I slept quite long, may be a few days.”
Khunti Guru, a well-known name in his neighborhood, lives alone in a small 10×12 room that is the only remaining structure of his family home in Prayagraj’s Zero Road locality.His father, Kanhaiyala Mishra, was a renowned lawyer, locals say. Though Khunti Guru had formal education, he went astray and spent his days in the streets of his town, while other relatives shifted to other places and advanced in life.
These days, Khunti Guru is a bubbling and affable character known to everyone in his neighborhood, Chahchand Gali. Shopkeepers in the locality share food and clothes with him in lieu of his daily helping of gossip, seasoned with his signature jokes. Though he has a bed in his room, Khunti Guru prefers to sleep in the grounds of a neighboring Shiva temple, where he likes to gossip with the priests.
On January 28 evening, Khunti Guru had attended the Sangam, where he intended to have a sacred bath in the Ganga for Mauni Amavasya but did not come back. His friends and neighbours searched for him after the stampede on the following day. Assuming that he was dead, they had conducted a prayer and meal on Tuesday. But as the Brahmins’ meal was being prepared, Khunti Guru turned up, riding on an e-rickshaw with a smile, inquiring, “What are you people doing?” Local social worker Abhai Awasthi remembered, “We were both happy and angry at the same time.”
The same sweets and puri-sabji, which had initially been for a prayer, were shared with locals to commemorate his return. On being asked what he had done during the absence, Khunti Guru merely replied, “I later went into a camp of Naga sadhus and served them food from various bhandaras and enjoyed myself in their service.” Awasthi further supplemented, “Now that he has returned to us, no one is complaining.”
