Walking Along The Ganges

I was born in a city situated on the banks of the river Ganges even as my grandfather was, in those very moments, paying obeisance at the source of the river – at Gangotri [praying, surely, in the interest of his grandchild’s gender selection]. The name he wanted for me had the river in it but that idea flowed, turned and dried up in a few family discussions. Millions of infants are delivered in cities along riverbanks - but you haven’t heard of Thamesson, Rhinebanker or Seineboy, though a few Hudsons do exist!

This story runs a different course, though. I was born within smelling distance of the Ganges. Even then the Ganges had a strong smell but our family home really was quite close to the river. I am sure there exist words in holy tomes that certify that bathing in the Ganges cleanse you of sins of a thousand lifetimes but to be born on those banks, ah – that would cover for killing a 100 Brahmins and a minor genocide on the side. As I grew up, on our annual 30 day vacation visits to that city, I accompanied my grandfather for a holy dip in the river at Kanpur. The plans built up like the summer heat over days and then one day we would trundle off, he and I, on a rickshaw for our bath. The family retainer would have been dispatched at four am to make arrangements. It was always a special experience changing wet clothes for dry one’s in plain sight of a hundred bathers.

Once I went to the river with my cousin who, even then evinced a sharp interest in photography and films. Suitably, he works with moving pictures and lives in LA. I had no real interest at that time other than whiling it away and I, suitably perhaps, live in Bangalore. That trip involved waking up very early and taking the rickshaw to the river bank. The rickshaw cyclist was an immensely dignified looking old man with flowing white hair and beard, and seemed every bit like the TV Godmen of today who occasionally get embroiled in sex scandals. He was, that day, both our deliverer and the subject of my cousin’s pictures. There were also a few ducks. They made pretty pictures, I was not in them.

I went, another time, with an uncle, a gaggle of ladies and some eight kids. The Ganges was browner that day, dirtier. Possibly, centuries of cleansing soul, fundus and fabric had taken their toll. Local goons had cordoned off the bathing ghat and charged a rupee for every bather. My erudite uncle, a professor of chemistry, had balked and argued. They laughed to our face – in Kanpur, as in Colombia, Sicily or Chicago, you never argue with the mafia. We paid, we bathed, we felt dirty. I have not been back to that bank again.

However, I have lived in another city on the banks of the Ganges. Sangam Prayag, the confluence site of 3 rivers, two real and one celestial. I have seen the naked naga babas, been in a boat a few meters in the river and bathed in that Ganges - along with my grandfathers - the ritual almost as generational as the relationship with the river. I have looked at that river flow oily, viscous but peaceful from the low wall of a mutt outside Kolkata, as it prepared to join the ocean. The sun was dipping that afternoon as I framed postcards in my mind – my cousin might have taken some great pictures if he had been there that day.

My parents stay near the river now, in a city an hour’s drive away from it. I have started visiting the river again. I have introduced our children to it and like many new introductions with kindly strangers this will perhaps grow in significance. I have driven to the river with my father, quiet trips that involved the road, sparkling green fields and, of course, the river. At Haridwar, the water is swirling, crisp and cold. Steps lead to the waters, and pillars and chains have been installed so that you are not swept away physically, even as you subliminate spiritually. On one particular day the flow was a trickle and I had to lie on the rounded, uncomfortable stones to let the Ganges flow over me.

The flow of the river here is controlled by a government department. Though I read in the papers recently that the river rebelled violently this year, sweeping away temples, swamis and travelers - a break in the Ganges literally. The rivers have moods, the rivers respect patience. I bide my time to meet the river again.