It was an honour and a great privilege to meet and film Mr. Amar Nath Tripathi. His wisdom and insight left us speechless, and we could have heard him talk for days. He carries us through this amazing spectacle, exploring the origins of age-old traditions and rituals and their relevance in today's world.
'The Confluence' is an effort to spread that knowledge and create social awareness of the 'Kumbha'.
'The Confluence' started out as a thesis production film, going towards my MA degree. Having assembled a crew comprising of filmmaker friends, I landed in India with an idea of exploring the multicultural facets of the country. It was as if fate was beckoning us to the shores of the Ganga and the Yamuna, to the 'Triveni Sangam', that was witness to the largest congregation in human history.
The 'Maha Kumbha' is every 12th edition of the 'Kumbha Mela', that occurs every 12 years. Thus, no living person has seen the last such event, which happened 144 years back, in 1869.
It was a stroke of great fortune, when in conversation with our riverside tent organiser, we learned of his father and a supposedly unending pool of knowledge. We thought filming him would be a good idea, as he had overlooked several previous editions of the 'Kumbha' himself.
