Caught in a terrifying crowd surge, a panicking Santa is taught critical survival skills by Banta. He learns to use the “boxer pose” to protect his breathing space and the “accordion method” to ride the waves of the crowd and move diagonally to safety.
Stampede
The Rational Fear
Fear of crowds is a normal or rational fear and not a phobia, particularly after a bad experience or psychological impact of crowd crushes and one needs to learn to cope with crowd anxiety which is called enochlophobia.
Faith’s Fatal Fall: Why India’s Temples Are Crushing Dreams of Devotion
9 DEAD in 30 Seconds. The railings snapped, and faith turned into a fatal fall at the Andhra temple. Here we dissect why this tragedy is a chilling echo of Mansa Devi and Hathras.
The Blessing of Luck
Santa believes the Kedarnath trek has been spared from stampedes due to divine blessings. Banta shatters this illusion with a grim analogy, arguing that the state has been playing Russian Roulette with pilgrim safety and its luck just ran out at Mansa Devi.
Santa’s Permit Pilgrimage and the Three-Headed Rakshas
Spit amongst three different districts, managing a major emergency in Rishikesh could really be challenging and warrants serious reforms.
Beyond Faith and Fate: A Blueprint for Crowd Safety in Uttarakhand’s Sacred Spaces
Though tragic, the Mansa Devi stampede of 27 July 2025 in Haridwar is a wake up call to seriously review and gear up Uttarakhand’s crowd safety and management capabilities.
The Deadly Truth About Crowd Collapse: A Survivor’s Guide
Crowd related tragedies are related to crowd collapse or crush and not stampede and crowd density rather than size is the main determinant with risk becoming emminent at 4 persons / sq m.