Covid dampens Sodal Mela spirit, to be low-key affair

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, August 31

Scores of vendors selling colourful things, sounds of drums and shehnai, children enjoying rides and screaming, hoards of people buying goods from roadside vendors and paying obeisance, happy faces all around, etc, we all would be missing these activities this year.

Cops monitor situation

Every year devotees were seen dancing and chanting the name of Baba Sodal with the band on their way to the templeIn order to ensure foolproof security arrangements, adherence to social distancing and wearing masks during the visit of people to the Sri Sidh Baba Sodal temple, Commissioner of Police Gurpreet Singh Bhullar said more than 600 security personnel and CCTV cameras were installed in and around the premises. Considering the Covid-19 pandemic, he asked people to obey health guidelines such as wearing masks, maintaining social distancing, etc, while visiting the temple.

It is for the first time that the Sodal Mela, which is celebrated on September 1 every year, will be a low-key affair this year. The pandemic has played a spoilsport. The historical mela is attended by lakhs of pilgrims. Every year devotees are seen dancing and chanting the name of Baba Sodal with the band on their way to the temple.

Earlier, the stalls of free community kitchen would also be put up near the Sodal temple area for the pilgrims coming from far-off places. And all this would start a week before the mela, but the pandemic has dampened the spirit.

For thousands of people, the fair is a means to earn their livelihood. People from within the state and also from Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and other states come here to sell their goods and earn a buck for their families. Vendor Raj Kumar (56), who belongs to Jalandhar and has been coming to the mela for the last 30 years, said it was for the first time that he saw such a scenario. “The fair always gave us hope and happiness that we would earn well for our family. But I had never expected that the Covid-19 pandemic would stop everything, even historical fairs like this,” he said. Raj Kumar said vendors from other states would also visit the fair.

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