Issue September 15 - 30

A lesson in the power of Nature.
It was the first time I was looking at the Ganga up close. It ran swift and awesome, the sides lapping against the banks, in foaming little eddies and whirlpools, whose might I would not want to test against mine. The river was a dark muddy brown.
I sat on the cement parapet, watching, fascinated at its swift flowing, oblivious to the throng of people that was slowly amassing all around. It was a grey, rainy evening in Rishikesh. I was waiting for the aarti to the Ganga to begin.
As I sat, gingerly placing myself on the very edge of a dhurrie that had seen cleaner, brighter days, and trying to ignore the oil and milk smells of the people who were collecting there, a batch of young students settled itself like a flock of birds, on the dhurrie , next to me.
They were all dressed in saffron kurtas and immaculately-tied dhotis , and wore sandalwood paste marks on their foreheads. They fluttered and fussed and then settled down, and soon, even as the sun peeped out through a mass of cloud and the rain held its breath, they began to recite the Hanuman Chalisa in high-pitched sing-song voices.
I watched them closely, and I could not but notice the different personalities that stood out in the mass. There were the devout, who with eyes tightly shut, recited the prayer by rote; there was the young boy who sat listening and piped in now and then, whenever the chorus came up.
The child is indeed father of the man, I thought to myself, and in each the seed of what he would become lay waiting to blossom. For now, they all formed one faceless voice.
When the arati began, all mayhem broke loose. The orderly crowd suddenly got to its feet and surged forward. And to my amazement, in a perfect demonstration of the demystification of religion, the pandas , who in other eras, would not have let anyone approach them or touch their holy vessels, passed the arati lamps from one grasping hand to another, up and down the river front, waiting patiently while each devotee whirled the lamps and took the heat of the sacred flame.
The river, not stopping to watch, flowed swiftly on. I sat awhile, waiting for the crowds to disperse. They flowed away too, in bursts and groups. I watched the river some more, still caught in its mighty power. I watched an old man, standing dangerously close to the edge, fill a plastic bottle painstakingly with water scooped from his palm. Then, my eyes widened in horror as he scooped another palmful, and sipped deeply of it.
He's drinking the water, I thought; this dirty, muddy water that bears carcasses, and into which the entire town thoughtlessly empties its filth... He holds it sacred enough to drink. I marvelled at his faith. And envied it a little.
For years as a child, I had grown up holding the waters of the Ganga sacred. Even today, in my mother’s puja place, there is a sealed copper vessel that holds the river water — something she picked up when I was a child or perhaps earlier. I have often wondered if the river of today would recognise the water in that little copper vessel as its own.
Generations of defilers have turned the once-pure, mighty river into — in some cities like Delhi, Lucknow and Kanpur — a dirty stream. Nothing, but nothing, I thought would make me touch the water.
But the river beckoned me still. Its might seemed to challenge me, to tell me it would outlast any man or his move to destroy it. It mocked my logic, and challenged me to try its strength.
I listened to what the river said. And without knowing why, went up and put my hand into its rushing water. It was cool, almost caressing, despite the force of it.
Tentatively, I tasted a drop. Nothing. No revulsion. No taste. Testing myself, I scooped a palmful of water and held it to my mouth, sipping. It was muddy, I could feel the grit between my teeth. Pushing away the thought that I should spit it out, I drank it down.
If I should fall ill... I thought, and then pushed the thought away.
The river that had challenged me would not lose so ingloriously. I would not fall ill.
I did not. Nature’s ways are mysterious indeed.

The Editor