..But I go on forever

The Ganges has never failed to evoke a certain element of pathos in me ever since I was a little boy. Despite its monotony, it has never been a bore. On the contrary, it has evoked questions that often go unheeded as the conveyor of daily drudgery keeps rolling. These questions have ranged from naive ones like, how deep is it in the middle? to more philosophical ones as I have grown in age and thought.

My earliest memories of this aorta of northern India are from the long walks papa and I took from our dwelling in the quarters of a jute mill campus to the wooden jetty that overhung precariously over its muddy bank. I can see myself hop-and-skip down the behemoth wooden staircase of the British-era staff quarters on a Saturday afternoon for a jaunt to the jetty. En route to the jetty, one had to walk through a stretch of pebbled streets garnished with flower bushes on the sides to reach the periphery of the campus and enter the factory site.

In it glory days the less-abused Ganges provided an untrammeled mean of transportation. Raw material and finished goods were regularly transported between the mills and the outside market via the Ganges. The long wooden jetties standing on solid iron framework with a couple of cranes at its end provided the means for the jute bales to be loaded from the factory site in massive barges. These barges would then be driven by innocuous-looking yet powerful wooden steamers along the river to their destination. With time, the road network developed while the Ganges kept choking on the disposals that humanity had to offer to it. I presume that somewhere down the line the powers-that-be turned their faces away from the Ganges and looked to transport their wealth by road. Now, the crestfallen Ganges has thousands of defunct, dilapidated and treacherously-stable jetties pierced into its belly like an anaconda acupunctured by innumerable needles along its sides.

The jetty I visited as a child was in a slightly better condition. The walk through the jute factory to reach it was an exciting one. All along you could hear the deafening noise of the machinery. The jute fibers filled the air like snow flakes in a New York winter. These fibres though were harmful for children like me who suffered from asthma and had a tendency to breathe through their mouths. Along the path we would come across security guards, supervisors and factory workers. In old factories in Bengal, there is a custom (which i believe to be a vestige of the British era) of saluting if one comes across a manager and one happens to be a guard or a worker himself. I always waited for these gestures from the guards when I walked with papa. He usually reciprocated a salute with a modest nod; but, to a child's fantasy it fostered the feeling of a Simba walking alongside a Mufasa through the African safari.

As one approached the jetty, the concrete road gave way to the wooden planks. The planks creaked at the weight of a human feet. The smaller the feet the lesser the creak. I usually hopped with all my might to make the creak happen. As I reached the end, the two gargantuan cranes stood on either sides as sentinels warning me of the might and fury of the Ganges.

On its banks I saw the first bee-eater, making a lasso in the air; the first boatman swaying with his bamboo to make a perfect crescendo; the first carcass with a solitary crow riding on it; the first high tide that set a hapless boat to roller-coast over the water; and many more firsts that have since been washed away from memory.

I remember the night when we crossed the Ganges in a boat from Jagatdal to Chandernagore to see the Jagatdhatri puja. Against the cacophony and the luminosity of its bank ( which has been a characteristic of this place during this festival) the Ganges looked almost Styx-like in its darkness. Only the periodic splashing of the oar disturbed the calm. Years later, on a night that India won the Hero-Cup final at the Eden Gardens, I witnessed this calm being rudely awakened by the constant son et lumiere of "chocolate bombs" and "rockets" (surplus stockpiles from the previous Diwali, stashed away precisely for such occasions).

The Ganges has had a unique influence on my thoughts each time i have stood by it. I have felt fear on the full moon night in 1993 when its water came knocking at our door. That the Farakka Barrage had decided to open its sluice gates to save the villages upstream from being flooded was know to us. What was not known was how different the Ganges looks when it is 50 meters away from your house as opposed to when it has submerged three of the four steps that lead to your house. I remember staring at the brown water in the midst of the night as it toyed with the flower pots that had sat obediently on the steps very recently.

On another purnima, just after the entire community had drenched itself in a motley of colours, the river graciously allowed the colours to be washed off and sanity to prevail at her shores. At that moment it had been the perfect host graciously inviting humanity to enjoy its privilege. And at this moment, I had felt pure joy.

Years later, when I took my first flight out of Kolkata, my state of mind had been oscillating between emotions of apprehension, sorrow, and joy. Just as the flight was airborne, it did the customary tilt and I had a glimpse of the Ganges. From the height it looked no more its behemoth self. It looked rather like a sinewy mass of water negotiating its way through the metropolis. It also symbolized a part of me that I was leaving behind forever. Till then I had known it deep within, but it needed the evening sun to ricochet over the river into my eyes to see it.

Last year I visited her again. This time i went with ma and mashi to immerse Didima's mortal remains in her bosom. She accepted it with the grace with which she has accepted so many others before. I stood there for a while in the cold water, coming to terms with the inevitable. I tied yet another memory with the Ganges and came home.

This year I visited her again. To immerse something else in her bosom. It happened to be a paraphernalia of objects from my marriage last year. She accepted these too just like the year before. I stood there and wondered as to what evokes the gamut of emotions every time I stand by this perennial mass of floating water. I wonder whether there have there been others before who have felt the same. Then I realized that what I just did was a ritual that I blindly followed. Just like a million others before me. The first man (or woman) who conjured this ritual must have had a reason. He or she must have felt something seeing the Ganges that induced such a ritual. It is that something that I cannot explain. Nor do I wish to.

All I know is that the Ganges lets me realize how it feels to feel something. And to be able to feel i believe is a basic human faculty. I am glad it is perennially there and I am glad that I keep returning to it, notwithstanding the reason.