The River That Flows In Me (Part I) 

I grew up knowing the river as the Holy Ganges, "Maa Ganga", as popularly called in Bengali -and so did all others in my town- till we reached the school and learnt that it's the Hooghly, a tributary of the Ganges. We nevertheless continued calling it "Ganga", and we still do. Hooghly, to us, remained the name of yet another town further upstream while the river still is Ganga for us.

The river stayed on with me as I continued on the journey of my life. So much so, that I could never realize how people in a city, a town or in a village, which does not have a river flowing alongside it, survived, till much later, when my fate brought me to Bangalore and made me settle down there. Yet, while I continue staying landlocked in Bangalore, elevated at a height of three thousand feet from the mid-sea level while the nearest river flows 100 kilometres away, my river still stays with me, flows within me. 

Back then when I was a child, life was a lot easier. The sports called ‘the rat-race’ was yet to catch up, we were allowed to do things our way – to run around the clay field as hard as rock during the summer and submerged in ankle-deep water in the monsoon in bare feet to get a chance to kick that illusive football which always slipped away, to run out and get wet to our hearts’ content whenever it rained, to play ‘gilli-danda’ with friends (it didn’t matter if some of them were the children of our domestic helps), and many such things after the school hours or during the long holidays.

That’s when and how I got to know her - sitting by her side while she danced and flowed, watching her changing colours- from shining silver in the morning to glowing orange before the dusk to tranquil black tinted glass at night. Plunging myself into her and swimming with her became my favourite physical activity. She showed me Dolphins, the Gangetic Dolphins, considered one of the rarest sightings now. She showed me how the fishermen threw the fishing net into the water just as the Sun went down,  she taught me how to sail those small local boats that the fishermen navigated so expertly even in high-tides. She taught me how to negotiate the current and to use it to my advantage while swimming in the monsoon when she was at her fiercest best. I started spending more and more time with her. I started carrying her earthy and mossy and wet smell back home with me every evening.  

And slowly she became a part of me, she started growing on me, she continued flowing inside me.  

One of the most amazing times all of us in the town used to spend in the riverside was on the last day of the ‘Durga Puja’-the ‘Vijaya Dashami’ day- the day when the massive clay-idols of ‘Maa Durga’ along with her four daughters and sons from the innumerable puja venues from all over the town and the nearby villages were taken to the Ganga through ceremonious processions. And that just was the beginning of the ritual. Scores of vessels of different shapes and sizes-which even included some huge barges were then loaded with those idols - each boat allotted to one set of the idol. No cranes, no coolies, all those massive clay-idols were hand-lifted and carried down the slippery steps through the muddy shores to the boats by the young and the able ones among each Puja organizers – but not before the idols were rounded seven times while they remained lifted into the air and that was the custom.

And then as the dusk fell, the vessels, with lights gleaming, loudspeakers screaming, drums beating, festoons, flags and banners flying in the river-wind set off on their journey upstream & downstream while thousands of townsmen looked on and cheered from the riverbanks. The custom maintained that the first idol to be immersed was the one from the ‘Guru-bari’, the residence of the senior &the most respected Brahmin in the town and I didn’t see the rule flouted for once. The idol would slowly be downed into the water from the boat with utmost care- we treat ‘Durga’ as our mother - till it is laid on its back in the river and as the water soaks into the clay idol, it slowly goes down into the river amidst the deafening chants of ‘asche bochor aabar hobe’ (this shall repeat the year next and the next) & the intoxicating beatings of the drums. The ritual is repeated for each set of the idols carried in each one of the vessels, often in order of importance and might of the respective Puja Committees till the late evening.                         

………to be continued