On the Ganges: Encounters with Saints and Sinners Along India’s Mythic River

351 Pages·2018·12.81 MB·English

by  George Black

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Table of Contents
About the Author
Photos
Copyright Page

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For bridging the language gap and opening locked doors, thanks to Mostafizur
Rahman Jewel, Praveen Kaushal, Damayanti Lahiri, Ajay Pandey, Pallavi
Sharma, and Pranav Sharma.
For lending me an extra pair of eyes, thanks to Agnès Dherbeys, a brilliant
photographer and awesome traveling companion, and to Diane Cook and Len
Jenshel.
For helping to usher earlier versions of some of these stories into print,
thanks to Doug Barasch, John Bennet, Alan Burdick, Scott Dodd, Mac Funk,
Janet Gold, David Kortava, David Remnick, and Dorothy Wickenden.
For creating Paragraph Writers Space, where all this eventually came
together, thanks to Joy Parisi, for her vision and her friendship. And for keeping
the ship sailing smoothly and the jar of Hershey’s Kisses always filled, thanks to
Lee Bob Black, Ryan Davenport, Maya Macdonald, Ilana Masad, and Amy
Meng.
For teaching me new things about our shared craft (even if you didn’t realize
it at the time), and for listening to my lamentations when the going was rough,
thanks to all my fellow paragrafistas. It’s impossible to name everyone, but I’d
be remiss not to give a special tip of the hat to Saul Anton, Zaina Arafat, Kavita
Das, Lisa Dierbeck, Elyssa East, Will Heinrich, Sophie Jaff, Anne-Sophie
Jouhanneau, George Kyrtsis, Tim Mangin, Ruth Margalit, Sam Nigro, Susanna
Schellenberg, Kaushik Shridharani, Kathleen Smith, Sarah-Jane Stratford, Laura
Strausfeld, and Cynthia Weiner. Aurvi Sharma has been a particular friend to
this project, and her kindness, sharp intelligence, and sense of humor have saved
me from countless errors, both large and small.
For sharing their time, advice, hospitality, and encouragement, and for
putting up with my insatiable curiosity and often ill-informed questions, thanks
to Anupam Agarwal, Fatima Halima Ahmed, Shirin Akhter, Babu Alam, Firoz
Alam, Taj Alam, Abdullah Ansari, Alyssa Ayres, Jugal Giri Baba, Acharya
Balkrishna, Adam Barlow, Rajiv Bawa, Martin Brading, David Bruce,
Vidyawati Chaudhary, the myriad Chowdhurys of Varanasi, Akanksha Chaurey,
Prateek Chawla, Dilip Chenoy, Sarat Dash, Kaushal Deb, Bibek Debroy, Paula
Devi, Sumant Dubey, Michael Duffy, R. K. Dwivedi, Jennifer Fowler, Atanu
Ganguli, Anshul Garg, Anchita Ghatak, Vignesh Gowrishankar, Tapati Guha-
Thakurta, Hafizurrahman, Saleemul Haq, Kanupriya Harish, Syed Iqbal
Hasnain, Shahidul Islam, Ramaswamy Iyer, Anjali Jaiswal, Rakesh Jaiswal,
Maj. Rajinder Singh Jamnal, Jesmin and the women of Savar and Mirpur, Tara
Joy, Babar Kabir, Kushi Kabir, Bonani Kakkar, Pradeep Kakkar, Capt. Mostafa
Kamal, Abhishek Kar, Raju Keshri, Meeta Khilnani, Radhika Khosla, Zakir
Kibria, Sivarma Krishnan, Col. Manoj Kumar, Nitish Kumar, Anil Kuriyal,
Bharat Lal, Anuradha Lohia, Arun Lohia, Munmun Maharaj, Iftekhar Mahmud,
Petra Manefeld, Elisabeth Fahrni Mansur, Yvonne McPherson, Brij Mehra,
Mike Metrik, Vishwanbharnath Mishra, Ramgopal Mohley, Partha
Mukhopadhyay, Mukhti, Bob Nickelsberg, Simon Norfolk, Martina Odermatt,
Ragini Pandey, Deependar Panwar, Priya Patel, Ajay Puri, Prema Ram, Navneet
Raman, Nithya Ramanathan, Jairam Ramesh, Anita Rana, Haroon ur Rashid,
Mariam Rashid, Deepak Rathor, Shruti Ravindran, Shravya Reddy, Ibrahim
Hafeez Rehman, Rahim Riyaz, Pallavi Sah, Arvind Sand, Ravindra Sand,
Benedict Poresh Sardar, Suresh Semwal, Shabnam, A. K. Sharma, Mourvi
Sharma, R. P. Sharma, Shashi Shekhar, A. C. Shukla, Ajeet Singh, Arun Singh,
Mahavir Singh, Minijit Singh, Rakesh Singh, S. N. Singh, Violet Smith, Salma
Sobhan (who left us much too soon), Leena Srivastava, Meera Subramanian,
Mahmudul Suman, S. Sundar, Michael Thompson, Sir Crispin Tickell, Vijay
Shankar Tiwari, Raitis Vaivods, Annapurna Vankeshwaran, B. G. Verghese, and
Petra Wolf.
For the beautiful maps, thanks to Joe Lemonnier.
For Anne, David, and Julia, thanks for your collective creative energy,
intellectual and moral curiosity, and regard for fine writing.
For sixteen years of friendship, advice, and support, thanks to my
incomparable agent, Henry Dunow. Long-lasting relationships and personal
loyalties are increasingly rare in this business, and writers can often feel like
relief pitchers in baseball, bouncing from one team to another in search of the
best contract for each new season. For that reason, it’s a special pleasure to work
twice in a row with the same house. Thanks then to Sara Ensey, Meryl Gross,
Gwen Hawkes, Steven Seighman, Dori Weintraub, Michelle Cashman, Rob
Grom, and the rest of the fine team at St. Martin’s Press, but above all to
Michael Flamini, who came up with the idea for this book in the first place.
Michael, this one’s for you.
A NOTE ON LANGUAGE
For anyone with a love of language, India is a special delight. Indian English is
deeply idiosyncratic, filled with quirky turns of phrase and archaisms from the
days of colonial rule. For a speaker of “standard” English—whatever that may
mean—the effect can sometimes be unintentionally comic, and in reproducing
conversations verbatim, it’s easy for the writer to come across as condescending.
I’m fully aware of those pitfalls, but my overriding goal was to capture and
respect the authenticity of the voices of those I met on my travels along the
Ganges.
Contrary to popular belief, only about ten percent of Indians speak English,
and not always fluently. Many of the conversations in this book were with
people who spoke only rudimentary English, or none at all. Some switched back
and forth between English and their own language. Many spoke only Hindi, or in
some cases Urdu. In these situations, the writer is at the mercy of the translator,
and inevitably some translators are better than others. Again, I have done my
best to convey the speaker’s voice as accurately as possible.
Since Independence in 1947, the anglicized names of more than a hundred
Indian towns and cities have been changed. The effects of this on popular usage
have been uneven. Madras has all but given way to Chennai, yet very few people
refer to its southern neighbor as Bengaluru; it’s still Bangalore. While some
argue for Mumbai, others stay loyal to Bombay. There’s a similar tension
between the new Kolkata and the old Calcutta—a matter that is debated by
residents of the city, fueled by vodka mojitos and bhang pakoras, at my Holi
party. The most extreme case of all is Varanasi—aka Benares, Banaras, and
Kashi. In writing about these places, I’ve used different variants according to the
context, the source, or the speaker.
Above all, of course, there is the name of the great river itself. Is it the
Ganges or Ganga? If it’s the river goddess, I’ve always used Ganga, or Ma
Ganga. Otherwise, I’ve used both names, depending on the context and the
speaker. When in doubt, my default has been to call it the Ganges, simply
because it’s more familiar that way to non-Indian readers.