More than 500 bhandaras (community meals) are running at various sites in the Mahakumbh area where lakhs of devotees are getting prasad (meals) every day. Large scale arrangements have been made in the Annakshetras (feeding areas) to provide food and prasad to such a large number of devotees.
The biggest kitchen in the fair area is of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) located in its camp in Sector 19 where 40,000 rotis are being made every hour on three automatic machines.
Assistant in-charge of the kitchen Radhakund Das said that here, along with machines for kneading dough, cutting vegetables, etc, more than 100 volunteers are busy preparing Mahaprasad each day.
ISKCON also has a mega kitchen near Prayagraj Junction. With the help of industrialist Gautam Adani, food is being served to 1.5 lakh devotees every day from both these kitchens.
In this kitchen in the mela area, a mini rail track has been laid to carry large utensils of rice, pulses, vegetables, etc from one place to another.
Huge pots (bhagonas) are lifted and placed on the platform with the help of a pulley system and then taken from one place to another on the tracks.
{{/usCountry}}Huge pots (bhagonas) are lifted and placed on the platform with the help of a pulley system and then taken from one place to another on the tracks.
{{/usCountry}}The dough kneading machines knead 50 kg of dough in 15-20 minutes. There are 15 wood-burning and 15 gas-burning stoves in the kitchen. On four stoves only water is heated all the time and rice is cooked immediately as per requirement, said the kitchen staff.
Puris are made by hand. The devotees are being served dal, rice, roti, two types of vegetables, puris and halwa, laddu or kheer as sweets. The process of cooking food in the kitchen starts at 3 am each day. After making all the preparations, food is cooked in two shifts from 5 to 8 in the morning and from 1 to 4 in the afternoon and food is distributed from 9am till 6pm like clockwork feeding waves of pilgrims, sadhus and tourists free of cost.
Food for 20,000 prepared each day with help of machines
Arrangements have been made for food to be cooked and served to 20,000 devotees every day in Akshaya Patra’s camp located in Sector 6 of the tent city. Most of the work here is being done through machines. There is a special cooker for making rice in which a maximum 110 kg raw rice can be put in at one time and after cooking its quantity becomes around 350 kg. In the cooker for pulses, 750 liters of pulses are prepared in one-and-a-half hours and in the cooker for vegetables, 350 kg vegetables are prepared at a time. Around 2,000 rotis are being made every hour with the help of a roti-making machine to feed the pilgrims.
40 quintals of potato curry at one go
Thousands of people are taking prasad at seven places in the feeding areas of the fair, under the name of ‘Om Namah Shivay’ of Lal Mahendra Shivshakti Seva Samiti Ashram. The special thing is that food/prasad is distributed here 24 hours a day. Vegetables, curries etc are made in three big pans in the kitchen located at Parade Ground. Sevadar Vishal Srivastava said that 13-14 quintals of flour gets consumed in the camp every day.
In the biggest pan, 40 quintals of potatoes and vegetables from two-and-a-half quintals of tomatoes are made each time. There are different machines for peeling and cutting potatoes, ginger, chilies, spinach as well as grinding whole spices and tomatoes, ginger etc. Wheat and gram are ground in machines and flour and gram flour are made at the site itself before being kneaded and rotis made, all with the help of machines.