I see a streak of colour, a boy in a red sweater runs across the fields that stretch along the curve of the river. They are vast gashes of green and yellow, sloping towards the river that eats into their existence, cutting away at the cliff they stand on. A stray eagle bobs on the air, now coming straight at me, now just a straight line as it dips and soars far above the horizon. I want it to be intoxicated, consumed with the thrill of being alive, momentarily forgetting to look for the dark things that scurry underfoot.
My grandfather’s ashes were released into this river. Set loose from the confines of skin and clothes and wood smoke and metal, as only primal elements can be. Feet sinking into the sand we stood at the river, around the only one able to lead us through our grief, the local madman. His low constant chant our numbness: isko doodh mein dhoh, apna is patte se katori banao, aata ko iskme dalo. Behind us a swollen cow lay on its side. हम मोक्ष दिलवाने आये थे, कोई बिन पूछे पा लेते है. Ma broke away from the group, unwillingly boycotting a ceremony she came uninvited to. She teetered on a rock, unable to look at the river carrying away her father.
Bua had stood knee deep in this water, flicking his fishing road towards the millions of fish rushing along in the water. I stood at a safe distance behind him, away to the side ever fearful of the prospect of my nose being ripped off my face by the adamantine hook, wondering how anything had the wits to grasp greedily at an inviting sparkles as it struggled along the whoosh of the water. The irony of a life of struggle ending on the end of a nylon string. But Bua always released the fish he caught, after it was carefully weighed and photographed. The futile endeavor of a lifetime, to know, name and own the contents of the river.
We came visiting my grandparents’ orchard atop the river in the hot summer months. The trees bent towards us laden with leechis and mangoes and fruit flies flew morbidly into our eyes. We were told the river was dry: it still looked menacing to me, glinting invitingly in the sunlight.
The murky, placid waters of the Ganga at Varanasi are a constant reminder of death, like a picture postcard. Bobbing atop a placid boat you release little bits of fire onto her. The fiercer Yamuna, fiery in its youth beckons to you, reeling you in with a magnetic urge that makes your bones hurt. You fight, but scores of people can’t and don’t. Senses perhaps blunted by alcohol, they slacken their grasp on this world, and the world slackens its grasp on them. They leap into it in a rush of adrenaline to fight the only fight they ever want to lose, finally giving in a wave of panic and relief. But we know nothing of this struggle, just reel in their grotesquely swollen bodies.
The stories ringing in our ears we climb over the string that demarcates the end of the village meant to keep out bad spirits, and roll down the path, pulled towards the water. We try to follow the source of the river and scramble over rocks and crisscross the stream that runs into the main tributary. We exultantly strip down to our underwear, spread our limbs out in the water. Squinting at the sky, with the sun warming our shoulders we bask in our youth. Growing up with a larger than life sister means you rarely have to raise your voice -- the river today is my vocal sibling. The rocks I balance on slip from under me, tumbling towards the bottom, far away to the sea.
Ever changing, never the same, and yet more real than we as humans will ever be. The river unnerves us. Scurrying in our cities we drug her to forget this, clogging her with rank sewage and black murky waste. Building walls to contain her, and she retaliates in kind, flooding our cities with our own waste. And yet we worship her, calling her mother, beseech her for support as we give unto her our dead and our grief. But it flows on, defying even our anthropomorphism. Heraclitus knew what we can not accept: the river, like everything, changes constantly, impervious to our stepping in. Not once, not twice, nor ever.
