A spindly hand sticks out like a perch on which a crow might sit. Beyond the heads of the naked Naga sanyasis the hand is a beacon, attracting audiences in numbers that the best of performers would envy. The fingers are rolled up in a fist, the palm is hidden, the nails long and look like they melt into the wrist, a fading tattoo on the forearm. The hand belongs to Baba Amar Bharti Urdh Bahu (Urdh Bahu, as in raised arm), a frail sadhu sitting in the far corner of the Panch Agni Juna Akhada. A crowd, as usual, has gathered around him. Carlo D' Huez, an itinerant Spanish photographer, is drawn to the curious sight. The baba is happy - the facial hair parts to reveal a grin - and prepares to pose yet again. 'Namaste,' says Carlo. The baba acknowledges. Carlo kneels, the heavy 120mm Hasselblad camera resting between his left hand and shoulder, and sizes up the man - rather his hand. It is frozen stiff but the freeze does not go past the right shoulder blade. A sidey of the sadhu nudges Carlo and whispers: '27 years.' The sadhu has been like this, hand raised, for 27 years. Carlo is disbelieving. He wants to cross check. So he points at the hand and asks the sidey to ask the sadhu: 'How long?' Baba crosses his legs, sips tea from an earthen cup and says to the interpreter: 'Tell him I am illiterate and cannot count.' Carlo nods. 'But I can tell you how many years my people - my disciples - have counted.' Carlo hangs on to every word. 'How many?' he asks in a rush. 'Two thousand,' the sadhu shoots back. 'Two?' asks Carlo. 'Thousand,' adds the baba. Carlo looks around him, wonders if he has heard right. No one in the crowd sniggers. He gives up, brings the camera to his eyes, focuses and clicks away. Fooled he might have been, but that will not show in his pictures. He leaves behind a note of $ 10. Kumbh, as commerce, means wowing with the weird. But really, it's not the sadhus who are making the money - not all of them anyway, for their needs are meagre: some milk, some millets and, most of all, marijuana. The money is made by the government, the hoteliers, the tour operators, the guides, the television channels. As the Kumbh draws close to the first of its major Shahi Snans (holy baths) on January 14 - Makar Sankranti - Hinduism turns into showbiz: sadhus with hairstyles that funky youth will give their left hand for, fat sadhus in red satin robes atop elephants, whose mahouts demand money for exhibiting the godmen, sadhus who know all the expletives in the English language and sadhus who weave fantastic visions with rhetoric. The weird wows the most in the Panch Agni Juna Akhada, a monastic order of ascetics. Stripping themselves bare, they sit cross-legged and smoke pot in front of each tent. One - aptly calling himself Digambar (with only the sky for clothes) - is an old man with an enormous paunch. But that does not come in the way when he holds a baton between his hands, brings it to play in the area of the groin and performs impossible contortions. 'Jai Siya Ram,' shouts a spectator. 'Jai Siya Ram,' comes the reply. 'Har, har Mahadev.' It is a wish that also serves as a chilling reminder: that the Mahakumbh is where the Vishwa Hindu Parishad is holding the dharam sansad of sadhus that will decide when to build the temple at Ayodhya. 'The image of our holy men is not what it should be,' laments Vima Prakash, the VHP spokesman. 'This is because the world around us is turning too materialistic. We need to re-infuse spiritualism into the Indian conscience.' What a venue, what time - the 21st Century - and what people claim the right to shape the destiny of a nation!