Ganga Calls Me...

 

Prafulla Kumar Mohanty

When the winter night descends with vaporous heaviness shading the sky, the stars invite me with their half twinkly mischief, I pedal my rented bicycle on rough short cuts to Ganga at Triveni Sangam. The nip in the air, the irregular growth of flower plants amidst bushes unrecognisably dense and the unpaved road pathlike leading me to the confluence of Ganga, Yamuna and the unseen Saraswati at Sangam.  In half thrill and half fear I turn from the Katra roads to the seven kilometres of mercurial joy through scattered settlements singing all the way. The Ganga calls me, The Yamuna beckons me: come you lover boy, see how we swell with history; we flow time on our bodies, flow with hilarity where kings and paupers watch us to assess our ageless strength, when lovers beseech us to unite them, when Krishna and Radha sulk and make up in fanciful orgies. We shudder and fidget when armies shear our bosoms with their boats and ships to attack and kill people on our banks and beyond. We cease to breathe and flow when new born girl children are thrown into us, when dead bodies are thrown into us as if we are dumpyards, and we cry when tortured young women and jilted lovers jump into us to save their self respect from sexual bestiality. We are vocal and eternal witnesses to man’s glory and depravity. When men and women worship us, drink our waters as ambrosia we bless them but when they throw all sorts of rubbish into us we protest in turbulent fashion and warn them not to take away our purity by their philistine ways. But we love them- humans and all life. Those who write love lyrics on our banks, sing ballads to their lovers, play the mesmorizing flute as Krishna did we also turn lovers. We bless them, empathize with them and often greet them to their freedom with ripply smiles. We carry their flowers, fruits with unease but tolerate human folly to the best of our patience. They have dirtied us but we in unprotesting helplessness silently wither away ...

I listen to Ganga and Yamuna. I listen to their songs and moans. I pedal my way to them to see their pearly expanse. Yamuna is darkish, deep and sober like a woman who has seen the romance of life as well as the horrors of mans irrational logic.  She has felt the naked warmth of luscious Gopis as well as the poison of the king cobra kalia. She has made way to  Vasudeva carrying the new born Krishna on his head going to Mathura to save the new born from the wrath of Kansa; she has witnessed terror and glory calming her soul to follow the rhythms of time . Ganga is full and empty as the mood takes her on. Flowing from the matted hair of Shiva she is the life giving fluid from heaven and also the moral arm of death, punishing errant humans transgressing life –enhancing values.  She is short tempered like a proud maiden, beautiful  and haughty: she is also a sage in contemplation.  She has often changed the course of history to bring humans to the moral path. She saves souls purifies body and mind but always ‘tameless swift and proud’.

I row with permission of the boatman and watch the bubbles of water born and reborn at the aft of the boat. I sing for Yamuna imagining the childhood pranks of Krishna. Poetry becomes reality, reality envelopes me with benign beauty. Suddenly the boat enters Ganga ,I lose balance, I fall into her bosom under the eighth day moon. The boat man saves me. I return the next night as if nothing has happened. The boatman smiles and leads me on.

During my postgraduate days at Allahabad this was my daily routine. If it rained I did not venture out. On all other nights I rented a 9 to 9 bicycle from a cycle shop near Holland Hall paying only eight annas, half  a Rupee for my – what shall I call it – an adventure bug biting me or the perennial charm of a river flowing from god knows  where with her grace and life force. Rivers are time’s darlings flowing with life giving waters sustaining civilizations.

But now when I ask myself what was the attraction, why did I go every night to boat in Yamuna (Ganga was of variable current, not favoured by boatman in lonely nights) at the risk of my studies without knowing how to  swim; my answer would be- I don’t know. Maybe I was in love. The river like the primordial Aphrodite spread eagled on earth’s bosom calling me to absorb my mind and heart to a romance of living. What’s life after all? Not a time span for birth- procreation – death with a pseudo game of housekeeping thrown into follow Trivarga- Dharma, Artha, Kama. Not a challenge of the Maker or just nature’s mischievous off shoot of purpose to spend time from the cradle to the grave experimenting with your imagination of Man’s purushakar with ideas, norms, forms, inventions in impalpable encounters where defeat is the only truth, if there is something called truth anywhere. Yes I was in love with rivers; all rivers big and small. I wanted to wear the river around my neck and have orgiastic pleasure. My body they say is 7o percent water, the earth too is surrounded by 70 percent water. I wished to play with the rest thirty percent for I am not a body. I am an essence of extra corporeal stuff. Now the Ganga calls me Yamuna calls me the hidden streams call me to be my essence here, now everywhere.