Geetanjali Krishna: Afloat on faith

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During a walk through the ghats in Benares one morning, I chanced upon two men decorating the sides of an upturned boat with turmeric, rice and vermillion handprints. They were certainly taking their time with it, I reckoned, when on my way back after fifteen minutes, I found them still at it.

"Why are you decorating the boat like this?" I asked them. But they seemed to be praying. So I sat and watched them work in silence, waiting for them to finish. They covered the edge of the boat with hand prints, and then reverently put down some offerings of flowers on the riverbank.

"Now we can talk," said the elder of the two, coming to sit beside me.

His name was Munnu Mistri, he said, and was known across the width of Benares' 165 ghats as one of the finest boat makers around.

The person with him was Shankar Majhi, who'd commissioned the boat.

The two men had been hard at work for the past fifteen days, bending planks of wood on bamboo frames to make the structure of the boat. Now that their boat had taken its final shape, they said, they performed simple pujas everyday before starting work. "Everything we do must have the blessings of Mother Ganga and the goddess of the ghat. This is the convention," said Munnu.

Another convention, they explained, was that the boat builder always built the boat on the boat owner's ghat. "And as the owner of this boat, I must be present while it is being made, and assist Munnu Mistry as well as I can," said Shankar.

The two men resumed their work, and I sat back to watch. The boat was lying on its side, and they were painting its bottom with coal tar. "Building boats is a time-consuming task," said Munnu, "even an ordinary boat like this one takes about a month to make." It's hard work for which the boat maker is well compensated "" he receives at least Rs 315 a day in wages, money that most cash-strapped boatmen on Benares ghats can ill-afford.

"Since there's no compromising on the materials with which our boats are made, the expenses are high," said Shankar, pointing out that the body of the boat was made with good quality teak and nails of the finest iron. This boat, Shankar's first, was going to set him back by about Rs 55,000.

However, Shankar wasn't complaining. "It is every boatman's dream to row his own boat," he said. Munnu then explained to me that a boatman's relationship with his boat was a mystical one. "It's not just a vehicle that gets him from one place to another," he said, "it's a magical creature that gives him sustenance and protects him from the dangers of the deep."

On the ghats, people believe even the nails of the boat, especially the five major ones that hold the structure together, are endowed with magical powers. "A boatman may sell the wood of a boat that can sail no more, but he'd never part with its nails," said Shankar. For these are the abode of the goddess they refer to as Taarini Mata, provider of livelihoods and sustenance.

I sat there a while, marvelling that a couple of planks of wood and some nails could come together to mean so much to Shankar. What would it be like to have such deep faith in something one couldn't really see?

I didn't know myself. These two men working on their boat by the Ganges offered me a glimpse into their world, and it looked so much simpler than my own.