 "Tripping Down the Ganga: A seeker's journey through faith and history")
Tripping Down the Ganga
Author: Siddharth Kapila
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
Pages: 440+32 colour photos
Price: Rs 799
In the course of history, religion has led to tectonic shifts in not just human behaviour through the introduction of rituals and customs but also influenced the general cultural and socio-political landscape. Siddharth Kapila in his debut book Tripping Down the Ganga: A Son’s Exploration of Faith takes us through his yatra across several prominent Hindu sacred sites along the holy river Ganga and tries to portray an experience rather a mere travelogue or memoir.Also Read
Mr Kapila begins his journey of writing this book with an act of renunciation by quitting his career in law. India, as we know, has been a land of religious renouncers, and Mr Kapila’s decision to follow a similar path (though his act is a professional one) seeks to find some meaning in this fast-paced, internet-driven world by documenting his visits to seven prominent religious sites along Ganga and recreating a long lost past. As often happens in families, the author used to accompany his mother, who was deeply religious, on her yatras from an early age in the 1990s, and he uses his memory from those visits to compare those experiences with his journeys from 2015 to 2022. The result is a series of interesting encounters with different kinds of people and revelations of several histories and mythologies that these places have carried with themselves.
The author first covers three of the four sacred sites from the Char Dham Yatra — Kedarnath, Badrinath and Gangotri — situated in the Garhwal Himalayas in the initial chapters. Then following the stream, he covers Rishikesh, Allahabad, Varanasi and finally Ganga Sagar in West Bengal, the site where, as the name suggests, the river meets the ocean. But at the centre of these journeys are the people he meets and what led them to be where they were — he records, for instance, the subtle bickering between the two pandits regarding their knowledge of Dhari Devi, the protector of the Char Dham, and subtle mysticism that surrounds the ascetic Naga Babas. It is through these encounters that we understand how the changing times have influenced devotees to either change or remain the same when it comes to their faith. As the experiences unfold, the reader also travels to Varanasi where the residents of the city expressed their contrasting views on the demolition spree for the Kashi Vishwanath corridor that was built subsequently. But the sentiment that stands out is one of criticism for turning an ancient city of faith into a marketplace.
Though the book is principally focused on faith and its human experience, it also touches on certain realities that cannot be ignored. The author doesn’t shy away from discussing the controversy surrounding the Gyanvapi Mosque of Varanasi and offers an objective historical context to it that underlines the many complexities of the issue. He reminds readers that despite its deep roots in Hinduism, the city has remained essentially syncretic in nature. This, after all, is a city where the Sankat Mochan Temple hosted a performance by Pakistani ghazal singer Ustad Ghulam Ali and where Ustad Bismillah Khan’s uncle the late Ali Baksh “Vilayatu” was the shehnai player in the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. Unfortunately, in today’s socio-political environment, such syncretism would be hard to achieve, a loss that the country endures and will take time to heal. For me, reading this book was a personal journey too. As someone who grew up in Allahabad (now renamed Prayagraj), a historic city that also carries immense religious significance and is the meeting point of the Yamuna, Ganga and the invisible Saraswati, making it the Sangam, reading the author’s experiences made me revisit my own memories. Especially interesting was the fact that the author underlines the changes he saw between his visits in the 90s and those he undertook more than two decades later, showing simultaneously how some things remained the same. These musings make this book a living tale of history and the present.
Another noteworthy aspect of the book is the author’s relationship with his mother and the role it played in helping him develop a keen but reasoned mind, which prompted him to become a seeker of knowledge rather than an all-knowing devotee. This, too, resonated with me, as someone who lost his faith at a very young age and has a deeply religious mother. Mr Kapila’s quest to explore his faith shows an alternative in the present socio-political milieu that is not dependent on hating the “other” but is focused on rediscovering himself and understanding the diverse and lasting meaning of one’s existence, creating an absorbing piece of prose along the way.
The reviewer is an independent writer, journalist and translator based in Allahabad. chittajit.mitra@gmail.com