merry to go around

An angry rivulet gushes down the calm valley announcing its presence at every curve, with a loud gush. Meeting another river at Dev Prayag, to become the mighty, revered and feared river of India. She courses through large towns almost dismissive of their presence. Seems to pause like a large dawdling pregnant woman at Varanasi. Then she slows down and dissects the land into tiny pieces as she meets the sea at the Sunderbans.



As someone growing up in India, the Ganga is a huge part of our textbooks, part of Indian mythology – the river that fell on earth from Shiva’s matter locks. But, all of this remained distant and just theory, till I met the river at her biggest and best! A sabbatical from work, 2 months to travel across India, I decided to trace the Ganga from the source in the Himalayas to the sea in the Bay of Bengal and travelling by road and rail, to actually see and experience.

I began in the high mountains where the Ganga is tiny, inaccessible and unstoppable and people wear warm clothes almost all round the year! I chugged on to the great, fertile Indian plains; the Ganga here is like the sea and the other bank seems like another country! Then chased the river to the sea – where the land seemed water drenched, and one needs to look for land in the midst of immense water.

From the mountains to the sea, so much changes – the people, the landscape, their looks, clothes, customs, food and even language. While the people were different, their love and veneration for this might river remained constant. Always a skeptic about this blind devotion for the Ganga! After this journey, I have begun to understand the symbiotic relationship mankind has with nature.


As I immerse myself at the confluence of the rivers in Allahabad. I close my eyes and think about the Ganga gushing through India, the lifeline for so many. Here, we always refer to a river as ‘she’. And yes, the river is a mother, nurturing, supporting life all around her. It made sense!