“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”
A. A. Milne
A Dip in the Ganges
Rivers, the cradle of civilisation. Be anywhere in the world. Cities with a rich cultural heritage often are on river banks. Or to put it another way, any city or town on a river becomes a cultural centre by virtue of that. Indian culture takes it to another level because of its mythological stories. As worshippers of nature, Indians revere their rivers and equate them to celestial beings. They pray to them as givers of boons and purifiers of sins. An interesting fact about the major river systems in India is that except for the Brahmaputra, all others have feminine names.
A Dip Towards Heaven
The image below, shot at Prayagraj, shows a devout Hindu performing the morning ritual of a holy bath by taking a dip in the Ganges. Ganga, the Indian name for the mighty, tumultuous, yet gentle river, that defines a geography and the surrounding culture begins her journey from Gangotri in the Himalayas. She is at her gentlest in the plains of Uttar Pradesh.
This ritual of taking a dip stems from India’s greatest epic, the Mahabharata. To answer Yudhisthira’s question about the benefits of bathing in Tirtha (Holy Water), his grandfather Bhishma said, “Even as especial attributes that inhere to the body have been said to be sacred, there are particular spots on earth as well, and particular waters, that are regarded as sacred. By reciting the names of the Tirthas, by performing ablutions there and by offering oblations to the Pitri (ancestors) in those places, one’s sins are washed off. Verily, those men whose sins are washed off succeed in attaining to heaven when they leave this world.” (Translated from Sanskrit Text)
These holy immersions are of more importance during special days and months, as also on certain festivals. The focus of the mega-festival of Kumbh at Prayagraj is this ritual of taking a dip in the Ganges.
