Like images of the sun rising or setting on the Ganges River, it is reflections—not direct observations—that enable me to make sense of my November trip to India.
True, reflections are imperfect. They are influenced by friends’ perceptions and feedback, reshaped by pain and happiness, and clarified by insight. Yet they are no less valid than the imperfect immediate perception of the experience.
After our team’s visit to Bal Vikas Ashram and meeting with Rotarians in Pratapgarh, we stepped off the river bank at Chunar and into a motorboat. We raised our pirate flag—a pretty red and black scarf tied to the pole our guide used to push us into deep water—and headed down the Ganges. It was my first opportunity to relax, enjoy the sunshine and allow the breeze to carry my thoughts whichever direction it pleased.
We passed steep banks with little temples and tall grasses where vultures soared overhead. We waved to boys in small fishing boats. I cringed inwardly at the sight of large pipes that channeled sewage and toxic chemicals into the Ganges. I watched with fascination funeral pyres with dead bodies—wrapped and covered in orange marigold petals—and thick, acrid, gray smoke rising into the air.
“Mother Ganga,” the Ganges River, grants new life, our guide told us. Indians commit the ashes or bodies of their loved ones to the river. In Varanasi—the final destination of our boat ride—people bathe in the water and perform religious rituals at its edge.
Just before we reached Varanasi for aarthi (evening prayers), my water bottle landed in the river. Unhooked from the carabiner that tethered my pure drinking water to my backpack and essentials, it floated in the muddy gray-brown water. Knowing I could never clean and sterilize the bottle for my use again, I mentally released it. Who knows whether it ended up in the home of a fishing family, was sold to an unsuspecting tourist or became a vessel for the Ganges’ holy water? Only Mother Ganga knows the new life it was granted.
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