18 June 2013, 06:59 PM IST
The Ganges has always fascinated me. As no doubt it does millions of others. But still, leaving so many, breathless.
As a young man heading out of teens seafarer working our way with the winds and the waves singing about the glories of this mighty River through the Bay of Bengal past ancient ports in Malacca and Coromandel weaving amidst the Andamans up past Sagar Island river navigate wary of pirates and just clearing the sandbanks sometimes bumping into them seeking out the Bengal tiger in the Sunderbans to the delta of the mighty rivers that started in the Himalayas and then met again in Bengal and into ports from Calcutta and Haldia to Mongla and Chittagong watching the colour change from blue to grey to yellow and finally muddy brown.
Researching as a white haired salt the effects of Farakka on navigation in the Hooghly on boats that have not changed in centuries called bhajuas heading downstream while trying to see if it was ever going to be feasible again to really revive inland water transport not just for connectivity through modern day Bangladesh towards Agartala but also towards the sea where river depths are measured in parts of a metre not multiples.
As a child growing up in railway towns along the Ganga listening to the songs of commerce and romance as paddle-wheel steamers crossed the huge river in Bihar where till today one old railway bridge at Mokameh-Barauni carries the bulk of transport across from North to South and then watching in fascination as the Ganga describes a complete turn to flow West for a short while before heading East again off Monghyr.
Towards romantic interests long gone sunset reciting poetry to each other when Bhagalpur was still a centre of trade with mica more recently moving by the scam load and more with records of connectivity by sea-going sailing ships to not just Cochin but international connections till Japan on one side and Angola on the other and listening at night to stories handed down by oral tradition of the glories of the Anga dynasty and opium from upriver and custom houses and the French adventurer General Jean Law who gave the British a run for their money as well as brought the art of making weapons of steel which is still the prime cottage industry there.
Out of interest towards books still not completed haphazard trips by trains to towns lost in time along the Ganga as she flows through modern-day Uttar Pradesh and amazed by the metre-gauge line prettiest bridge road rail crossing at Kasganj understanding why the British chose to move their broad gauge railway line away from the Ganga closer to the Jamuna while laying the alignment from Delhi to Cawnpore and what that had to do with Farrukhabad and earlier freedom struggles pre 1857.
Heading into Sleeman country in the reaches of the Dooabs and modern day thugs not averse to still using human bodies as fuel for brick kilns and sugarcane mills while bones find their way into medicinal plants harvested by the acre and where till today Sati and much more is something looked upon with veneration just hours from Delhi and once again travel on footboards along railway lines that provide the maximum number of crossings over the Ganga including the one named after kin of the training ship my own history sprung from the Dufferin Bridge at Benaras which is now Varanasi.
And then finally where the River as Goddess really comes into her own past Haridwar SaptRishi Rishikesh and then Devaprayag from where upstream flow the locks which I want the hair on my head to look like out of respect and not vanity especially the Bhagirathi to Gangotri and then the Gaumukh which no essay can do justice to.
Last year, my wife and I made a more relaxed trip to Devarayag, you can read about it here:-
http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Diary-of-a-Divorced-Delhi-Male/entry/striking-a-chord-at-the-rockstar-bhojanalaya
Today, the same River, the Mother Goddess, is sending a message, and much is being written about it already. What it will be like down-river, over the next few days, can only be imagined. But this much I know, what happens in the Ganges in the mountains, has an effect, finally, far away in the ocean too. And all points in between.
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