#44. By The River Ganga, Elephants.
In Rishikesh, John, Paul, George, Ringo and I float down a stream of consciousness. Come on in, the water's fine! ✨
Well. Here I am. गंगा तट.
Behind me, the ghost of The Beatles. Before me, a ravaged holy river. Inside me, dreams of elephants. The sand beneath my feet shimmers. I scoop some up in the palm of my hand. Mica? Pixie Dust?
My non-theism challenged as usual, in places like these. Natural phenomena sparking supernatural imaginings enough to make Dawkins and Hitchens shudder. But it was another scientist, Jane of Africa, who told me long ago about thundering waterfalls that make chimps dance in awe. The kind of thing humans tend to do in the presence of The Divine.
And now here I am in Rishikesh. Where Lord Shiva soaked up the deluge from a celestial river in his hair. A river that was sent from heaven to solve a drought, and brought with it the possibility of total annihilation. Waters potent enough to make anyone - chimps and gods included - want to get up and dance the tandav.
Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup… They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe…
The sandy bank winks at me using light from our closest star. The one we spin around. The one that Galileo at great risk to himself placed at the centre of our lives. Go kiss your science book!, a little neighbour girl said to me when I professed my atheism at age nine. That was forty years ago. Around the same time Jane Goodall told us about the dancing chimps and their waterfall displays.
The little neighbour girl was American. She had yellow hair and blue eyes and was the most beautiful little girl I had ever seen. Her father had been sent to Bombay to work on an oil rig (or something oil-related) and had received a “hardship” allowance. A hardship allowance and servants and membership to the Breach Candy Club, where once not long ago (legend has it) stood a sign that declared: Indians and Dogs Not Allowed. Oh dear me. Postcoloniality.
But back to this holy river. Embedded on its banks, empty Hershey’s chocolate wrappers, empty Tide detergent sachets, tattered red VIP underpants, and a single broken blue Bata rubber slipper. A species’ self-hatred rises inside me like vomit.
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind… Possessing and caressing me…
I close my eyes. I decide to let it go because sooner or later, in places like these, it lets go of me anyway. So why not sooner rather than later? Now is as good a time as any to forget about context, subtext, past, future. Now is a great time to go as a river.
I breathe in the mountain air. “Now I am become a river, creator of worlds!” I say. No one can hear me. I am the Anti-Oppenheimer. My water is blue and made of melted Himalayan ice. I am Ganga. I came down from the heavens once upon a time immemorial. I am a goddess divine.
A cool breeze blows over me scented by forested hills. I can feel the elephants slow-moving in leaves of jade and emerald. I can feel George Harrison’s breath on my neck. It smells like marijuana. I can feel John Lennon’s gaze on my face. It’s warm like sunshine. Paul! Ringo! Is that you in the water? Wait for meeee! I have an urge to walk into the river, submerge myself, and be born-again.
But now look, here are my two sons, so big - almost men. Teenagers - good lord - bending down to pick up small stones and plop them into the water. Again! Again! Ganga says, and they obey. She seems to enjoy this game. No fake thrills, no waterpark this. A mega water slide, straight from heaven. A heaven-sent Summit Plummet. Wheee!
Jai guru deva, aum… Nothing's gonna change my world… Nothing's gonna change my world…
From where I stand I can see short, squat concrete structures on the far bank. I delete them, using the Photoshop® in my head. I want know what those boys from Liverpool saw here in the 60s. I select tourists and devotees - their lust for having ‘done’ a thing - and delete them. Gone! (Am I a tourist? Or a devotee?) I select and delete the electric lines slicing up the Big Sky. Gone!
I remember that Kid #1 soon will need electricity - and wifi - to finish his history coursework. The coursework he should have finished before we ventured into the wild. But now it must wait. It must wait because for godssake we are Ganga Tat and I have successfully “removed background”. Take that AI.
From where I stand I can see Lakshman Jhula (or was it Ram Jhula?) that “marvel of engineering” built on the spot where Lord Ram’s brother crossed the river using a jute rope. Now people come to Rishikesh to bungee jump. I wonder what bungee cord is made of. Not jute, surely? Maybe the Gods are dead after all. Or at the very least, they’ve lost their sway.
Yeh dil mange more! We need bigger thrills. Thrill, the homegrown cola, that like Thums-Up and Campa Cola didn’t survive the deluge of Coke and Pepsi. No long-haired divine beings came to soak up the flood of economic liberalisation in 90s India. It had to be done, said the (bald) pundits. Who am I to disagree?
Who am I? I am the product of millions of years of evolution. 100% of everything in me is made of star stuff. I am thirty trillion (3×1013) cells that work cooperatively to organise themselves into organs, that work cooperatively to form an entity known as Me. This ‘Me’ uses the input from ‘my senses’ (all six of them) to create an inner experience of reality.
I sometimes share this construct in words. Words, dear reader, that could cause You - or rather the thirty trillion (3×1013) cells that work cooperatively to organise themselves into organs that work cooperatively to create the entity known as You - to have a response that could (if I am a good enough writer) affect your inner experience of reality.
Take that AI!
Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes… They call me on and on across the universe…
I am the Ganga and I am more magnificent than Mid-Journey, ChatGPT, self-driving cars and rockets that go to Mars. I think of the demons that want to destroy my Magnificence. I think of the angels with whom they once long ago churned primordial oceans to distil the nectar of immortality and as a side-effect made Order from Chaos. Will we eternally be trapped in a celestial tug-o-war? I am yanked out of Thinky Pain by Kid #1: We have to go find wifi, Mum. Now.
We walk away from the golden bank and the glittering river. It is a stone’s throw from Chaurasi Kutiya, aslo known as The Beatles Ashram. There is no time to stop and stare so we buy tickets - just to pee. The site is managed by the Forest Department. Rajaji Tiger Reserve - the true site of our pilgrimage - is close. So close that from here you can feel the heat of elephants, the purr of tigers.
We get into the car and follow the map to a restaurant with connectivity in a five-star hotel with another view of the Ganga. The kids order pizza and freshimesodas. Kid #1 plugs in his laptop. Kid #2 wanders around with a slice, staring at things. Our driver Bhura is fasting for Ramzan, taking a nap outside in the car. I go down to the ghat and pay a uniformed man for letting me splash Ganga Jal on my head even though I did that for free half an hour ago by the house haunted by John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Bhura the driver is a Gujjar - nomadic pastoralists who once lived in and off the forest. Like the tigers that softly pad through his ancestral land, his tribe is critically endangered. I step out onto the balcony and think about inheritance. I think of Rajajis elephants that can’t find footing on the concretised canals that crisscross their forests, and so drown.
Why did the elephant cross the canal? To get to the other side! The side that for hundreds and thousands of years their ancestors could get to without having to risk their lives. I think of the fact that whatever happens - is happening - to the Gujjars and the elephants, is happening to all of us. We can’t see the forest for the trees. We’ve lost our senses. We’ve lost our footing.
If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man… I pull out my phone to read Chief Seattle’s speech, the one he may not have given at all. How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
I then hit up Oxford Reference: “…the gods and demons…. using Mount Mandara as a churning stick, with its tip placed on the back of the tortoise… and the serpent king Vāsuki as a cord. The ocean becomes milk, from which Soma, the sun, and other personified deities appear, as well as the elephant, Airāvata…”
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letterbox… They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe…
All our old stories are filled with tigers and deer, snakes and birds, elephant-headed gods and flying monkey gods. The entire universe rests on the back of a tortoise. We once knew we a part of nature and acted accordingly. Until we didn’t. What the hell happened to us? Ah yes, the East India Company. Among other things. It’s never black and white, of course. It takes two hands to get The Clap. Or so they say.
I love The Beatles. Also Monty Python. And that man who wrote 38 plays in 25 years and showed us our true face. Are the thirty trillion cells once known as William Shakespeare ‘The Eye of God’ because of the Hegemony of the English Language? No! Yes? Maybe. I don’t know. Does it matter?
What matters? It matters that Homo sapiens chose not the way of the Bonobo (matriarchal, making love) but rather the way of the Chimp (patriarchal, making war). Is it too late? Will we change? Will we step up en masse and soak up the Ganga in our hair? Unlikely, but possible.
Kid #1 comes down to the ghat to say the rise and fall of the Weimer Republic is done, the stage has been set for Herr Hitler, and we can leave. So we do. On the ride back to the farm stay at the edge of the forest, a calm descends. Was it the fast-flowing wifi? Or the fast-flowing river bright blue…? I have always been scared of you… and your neat moustache and your Aryan eye, bright blue... An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen…. Oh, Sylvia! Why do you whisper at me at such inopportune times? I try not to think of Gaza.
I think instead of our long-haired host. I think of the Scotch and soda and bucket of ice he has probably laid out in the garden in front of the lodge that stands near the wheat fields. I think of the delicious spicy smells that are most definitely wafting out right now from his tiny gobar-lined kitchen’s woodfire stove. I think of the gleaming utensils and the cook’s wife who shone them. I notice that our closest star is preparing to retire for the day and the forest is bathed in magic light.
I know that soon, everything will be illuminated by the light of the moon.
