Two consecutive mornings spent at the currently under renovation Mahendru Ghat in Patna instilled a peculiar and uncharacteristic plethora of stark realization inside me...about something...or someone...Ganga ...
From time immemorialGanga has been subjected to endless tests of time. One of the very few rivers of the world which has stood the test of time. But I would place Ganga far above all d other rivers…
I m a big skeptic.
I dun buy theories far fetched and with blurry details.
I never believed that there was anything special up with this water body, which, like all other rivers of the world. is in a state of continual decay and falling day after day into gallows of disrepair…nor did I ever believe thatGanga held any special powers instilled in it that prevented it from doing so..
But a stark realization hit me as I spent my long, sunny and semi-religious mornings crouching on the ghat and observing an endless string of devoted public streaming like a line of ants into the seams of the great river and the many mystic powers it is supposed to hold….as I observed scores of masses pour their daily arghya-milk into the depths of Ganga…as I mundanely looked over as the washermen(and washerwomen) converted the hour old “pooja bedis” (wow…what a pun!!!) into dhobi ghats (again!!) and washed away all the dirt scrounged by cheap washing powder into this river (which, incidentally, brought back one more highly memorable photograph from the book “Countries Of The World” depicting the much famed dhobi ghat of Agra-the one underneath the railway bridge-that’s supposed to be one of the chief stereotypes of north India, but that does not really matter as the river in question there was the Yamuna, and goddess-ly it may, but it stands nowhere as compared to the decay-resistance potential of Ganga…my dear Delhi-wallas and wallis will only agree to it full-heartedly), and also I looked over, rather guiltily, at those unlucky lot, whose tight-pinched pockets could not even afford sanitation at their abodes, taking bath, ironically with water purer than money could ever buy…I looked over “desperate housewives” fighting to wash their utensils headfirst with the same water, blissfully unaware of the capers being caused with the same tide mere meters away, and also the cattle behaving strangely humanely very much dissimilar to the cattle residing at places where I resided, Rajasthan, where even mud-baths for the buffalos are a rare treat…
One may argue that all these vibrantly different needs this river caters to are no different than what the other rivers, other more politically important rivers, in this fateful country render themselves to. I would debate with an otherwise non-sufficient argument, that I myself would have subjected to a series of cacophonous disregard, had these mornings and this insight not happened…this is Ganga…and it exists, very much unlike the almost extinct Yamuna or the long-extinct Saraswati...Ganga, that continues to maintain its integrity inspite of tolerating the brunt of time from time immemorial…
Speaking rationally, Gangajal does NOT decay with time, a yet undefeated feat for any other river water till date...and funnily, scientists sorta’ know why!!Ganga is supposed to originate from a place that is climatically ideally poised to exemplify such behavior…
That bit aboutGanga soaking away all the sins of the bather is still a bit unclear to me…but that hardly matters…the realization itself is magnanimous that such trivial overstatements hardly seem important now…
Ganga, whenever flooded any banks, any locality or community, has always made it sure that she gives back more than she took away…if it taught the sufferers what is distress, it has inspired in a much more dire approach, how to recover from serious afflictions…how to make a new start and ultimately a better end…the gift of the magi…The gift of precious Silt…
I started to momentarily believe that the greatness she so modestly exhibits was well-predicted…looking at the way Bheeshma Pitamah turned out to be…chaste, epitome of justice, the influential pawn, the Brutus of Mahabharata…his procreator would have been as immortal, as pure, if not more…when the absurdity of my thoughts struck me. Some people would not call it absurdity (my mom didn’t, for example, reveling in the glory of her daughter’s newly sprouted religiousness)...But why to mar the credibility of the chastity and the immortality of the river by bowing down to such irrational reasoning…
The future implications of the greatness of this river is what our whole society unquestionably relies on…the reliability is so annealed into the mindsets of us commoners that we simply, optimistically mock at the idea of its extinction, its absence from the grounds of our existence…so be it…
HailGanga …
From time immemorial
I m a big skeptic.
I dun buy theories far fetched and with blurry details.
I never believed that there was anything special up with this water body, which, like all other rivers of the world. is in a state of continual decay and falling day after day into gallows of disrepair…nor did I ever believe that
But a stark realization hit me as I spent my long, sunny and semi-religious mornings crouching on the ghat and observing an endless string of devoted public streaming like a line of ants into the seams of the great river and the many mystic powers it is supposed to hold….as I observed scores of masses pour their daily arghya-milk into the depths of Ganga…as I mundanely looked over as the washermen(and washerwomen) converted the hour old “pooja bedis” (wow…what a pun!!!) into dhobi ghats (again!!) and washed away all the dirt scrounged by cheap washing powder into this river (which, incidentally, brought back one more highly memorable photograph from the book “Countries Of The World” depicting the much famed dhobi ghat of Agra-the one underneath the railway bridge-that’s supposed to be one of the chief stereotypes of north India, but that does not really matter as the river in question there was the Yamuna, and goddess-ly it may, but it stands nowhere as compared to the decay-resistance potential of Ganga…my dear Delhi-wallas and wallis will only agree to it full-heartedly), and also I looked over, rather guiltily, at those unlucky lot, whose tight-pinched pockets could not even afford sanitation at their abodes, taking bath, ironically with water purer than money could ever buy…I looked over “desperate housewives” fighting to wash their utensils headfirst with the same water, blissfully unaware of the capers being caused with the same tide mere meters away, and also the cattle behaving strangely humanely very much dissimilar to the cattle residing at places where I resided, Rajasthan, where even mud-baths for the buffalos are a rare treat…
One may argue that all these vibrantly different needs this river caters to are no different than what the other rivers, other more politically important rivers, in this fateful country render themselves to. I would debate with an otherwise non-sufficient argument, that I myself would have subjected to a series of cacophonous disregard, had these mornings and this insight not happened…this is Ganga…and it exists, very much unlike the almost extinct Yamuna or the long-extinct Saraswati...Ganga, that continues to maintain its integrity inspite of tolerating the brunt of time from time immemorial…
Speaking rationally, Gangajal does NOT decay with time, a yet undefeated feat for any other river water till date...and funnily, scientists sorta’ know why!!
That bit about
Ganga, whenever flooded any banks, any locality or community, has always made it sure that she gives back more than she took away…if it taught the sufferers what is distress, it has inspired in a much more dire approach, how to recover from serious afflictions…how to make a new start and ultimately a better end…the gift of the magi…The gift of precious Silt…
I started to momentarily believe that the greatness she so modestly exhibits was well-predicted…looking at the way Bheeshma Pitamah turned out to be…chaste, epitome of justice, the influential pawn, the Brutus of Mahabharata…his procreator would have been as immortal, as pure, if not more…when the absurdity of my thoughts struck me. Some people would not call it absurdity (my mom didn’t, for example, reveling in the glory of her daughter’s newly sprouted religiousness)...But why to mar the credibility of the chastity and the immortality of the river by bowing down to such irrational reasoning…
The future implications of the greatness of this river is what our whole society unquestionably relies on…the reliability is so annealed into the mindsets of us commoners that we simply, optimistically mock at the idea of its extinction, its absence from the grounds of our existence…so be it…
Hail
Very well written. I enjoyed reading it.
ReplyDelete-Gautam Sengupta ( facebook)
its an honour sir!!the blog is binf read by the likes of u....thnx a lottttttttttt
ReplyDelete