Flashy Cars, Gold, Tablets Computers - Kumbh Has Them All!

Allahabad: For reasons other than preaching salvation and guiding the teeming millions on faith and spirituality, the saffron-robed seers camping in the sprawling Kumbh mela premises are making waves for many other reasons too. Some are attracting eyeballs for their fondness for computers, IT accessories, pets, gold jewellery and even fleets of luxury cars!

And they are loving every moment of being called 'Computer baba', 'Gold baba', 'Tablet-waale baba', 'Ek haath baba' and the like. There is even a 'Kutte-waale baba'. The sobriquets are given to them by their followers for one personal streak or the other.

A five-foot something, with a twirled moustache and a pot belly would pass off as any other sadhu among the hundreds camping here since Jan 14 when the 55-day-long religious congregation - arguably the largest in the world and expected to draw over 10 million people - started but for his glistening gold jewellery. Sudhir Kumar aka Bittu-ji Maharaj claims to be wearing gold ornaments worth over millions of rupees. Dangling around his neck are heavy gold chains with lockets of Shirdi Sai Baba, Shiva, Durga and other Hindu gods. A resident of Gandhi Nagar in New Delhi, he says he has been wearing the "gold stuff" since very early in his life.

Admitting his fancy for the yellow metal, Bittu Maharaj said as of now, he is wearing more than four kg of gold on his body. He also points to the security guards who are with him 24x7 at the Harihar Ashram.

"It is a dangerous world and you've got to be safe," the 45-year-old chuckled. While he says he is not a 'sanyasi' (renunciate) in the literal sense of the word as he runs a readymade garment shop in the national capital he prefers calling himself "one of the many in the saffron league."