Ganga or the Ganges is no ordinary river. Instead she represents the essence of a civilization, form of a culture and substance of a faith. She is in fact, a way of life. She is a living goddess whose importance in the day to day life of a believer cannot be described in words or through pictures. This book is only a small but sincere effort to present the Mother Ganga, before the reader, in all her varied dimensions.
This book is an ode sung in praise of Ganga which has been variedly described as waters of creation, symbol of life, river of India and source of all knowledge. This is also a pictorial depiction of divinity-in-flow and personification-of-purity in the form of a river which is stated to have descended from heaven for the emancipation of mankind.
The uniqueness of the book is in its approach to the subject. It is not a focus on the popular destinations of Rishikesh, Haridwar and Varanasi. Three years of extensive travel along the 2,510 km long river – right from the Gangotri glacier (the source of the river), down to the Ganga Sagar, where it merges into the Bay of Bengal, this is a visual delight.
Over 400 pictures portray the daily life of millions of people, as the vivacious river flows through their hearts, day after day, sustaining and purifying on esoteric and mundane levels. The inimitable endeavour is reflected in the array of places, people and life around the Divine River, as it grows from gentle streams, flows through the eponymous planes of northern India and is consumed through the vast delta in the Sundarbans. |
