The Kumbh Mela is where siblings get lost in Hindi films. On a more serious note, it is considered the largest gathering of people, where believing Hindus get together for communal catharsis – to purge themselves of sin by taking a dip in the holy water of the sacred rivers.

It is held every third year at one of four locations – Haridwar, Prayag (Allahabad), Ujjain and Nasik – by rotation and is thus held at each of these four places every 12th year. It is the turn of Nasik this year and the 20 day festival is scheduled to take place on the banks of Godawari river in August-September, with 30 million religious devotees, ascetics and tourists expected to congregate. With such huge number of people, the event is an opportunity and a challenge for urban planners, dealing with issues such as crowd control, accidents and stampedes. At a recent such congregation in Andhra Pradesh, 29 people were killed. It is to avoid such occurrences that a few researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology have come up with an app called Nashik Trimbak Kumbh 2015.

Developed by Nebula studios, the app doesn’t just feature emergency contacts and near-by hospitals but also has a guided tour of Nasik and live feeds from the festival. Ramesh Raskar, who leads the team at MIT, told the Guardian newspaper that the idea "was conceived as a sandbox initiative to create a prototype ecosystem with the broader vision of game-changing innovation at its core. The challenges of the 2015 Kumbh Nashik will be mapped to help address similar issues in refugee camps, concerts such as Burning Man in the Nevada desert and in emerging cities across the world."

Who knows, perhaps even Bollywood films will never be the same again.