Archives and social histories inform a provocative approach to storytelling in my works.Two rivers that have been a source of succour for me–Thames in my present, a much-needed anchor in these turbulent and uncertain times and River Ganga (Ganges) from my past.
The sounds and images Juxta-positioned over one another.
Its soft sound of the lapping waves, water gurgling fast or at times gently on it journey...an infinite and insatiable hunger to meet the sea.
Water surges in exactly the same manner as it did back home
The sunlight dances on its ripples like tiny river nymphs as they did back home
The water here has the same promise to wet and drench me if I dipped in it as it would back home.
its nature of movement, of finality of the passing time, of certainty, its magnitude of infiniteness, of it being the giver of life and death both has inspired many, the poets the artists in the same manner as it has back home.
Just like back home, but here, where it flows it surges it nourishes,
back home she meanders and fulfils all just the same as it does thousands of miles away...they both do the same thing, connect people, touch lives, never still, never ending, a constant, just like the sun, the stars...one becomes a father, a God, Father Thames…a mother a goddess they call her Gangaji with respect and love.
I sit beside it and it calls on me in the same manner, when I am next to it fills me with melancholy makes me ruminate on the nature of existence it... my eyes gravitate to it every morning just in the same way... I wish to dip my hands, but don’t I hesitate... it never occurs to me to dip my body in it ... as I would back home. it must be the cold weather I suppose
The magnitude of the endless life cycle of a river its timelessness - the river to the sea. . .To the sea to the river makes it a perfect analogy of the cyclical nature of a human life, or even things.
Of ever flowing majestic, the mighty, the infinite, the giver of life, of death, of movement, of finality of the passing time, of certainty. It is a perfect analogy of the cyclical nature of a human life, or even things.
Just as the ganga, the Thames, reflects back the mood of the sky and the day, it seems serene, when washed in the sunset colours, or dark and scary and ominous in the inky colours of the night, moody and charged up reflecting the mood of an impending storm effectively.
That’s what I am conditioned to believe in,
the river has no agenda or purpose other than just flow.
It has no reasons other than the physics or the science of the forces that are leading it to be, or do what it does,
nor is it affected by the meanings or rituals that are being attached to it by us.
It just flows…
It is a life giver yes, because of it nature, water- which a life source, it houses hundreds and thousands of species of flora and fauna in and around it, of the thousands it supports human, are one of the many. So if its assigned a gender or a title, to be a father- Father Thames, or mother Ganga (Ganga-ji)does it change the nature of its being?
It just flows regardless.
If anything, the genders assigned, the stories, the mythologies woven around these majestic giants tell us a lot about the cultures they inhabit or flow through.
Humans have always wanted to control, aspire to have powers, or fancy to have them
-our stories, our mythologies reflect these elaborate naked desires as none other, it is no different with both where, both in the UK and India it’s the same-
The tale, the folklore, the mythologies talk about how one was able to part the river to make a path to be walked on or…how one walked on water.
It makes me shudder to even imagine if we had such powers, what we would do?
