Life and Death on the Ganga

1991 to 2025

Last week, we celebrated my elder sister’s birthday in a resort an hour outside Rishikesh, the mighty Ganga coursing around a sinuous bend, the forests shrouded in pre-monsoon clouds.

On this river - I indulged my nostalgia from the terrace of the restaurant - I have rafted with whoops of joy, immersed the ashes of loved ones, consoled my infant son at his ‘mundan’, celebrated my parent’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. Many of my life’s most significant moments have been shaped by its majesty, by the deep place it occupies in our collective consciousness, by the power of its waves, by the beauty of its autumn clarity.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to write accounts of some of my engagements with the Ganga.

The first:

Silyara Ashram, November 1991 - AI rendition

On the road to Uttarkashi, relief blankets were being tossed out of the back of trucks. In Uttarkashi market, roadside vendors were selling the blankets at thirty rupees apiece, a third of what they cost donors in Delhi.

But if you took the other road out of Tehri, first east and then north, following the Bhilangana upstream, the roads were deserted. The epicenter of the 1991 earthquake lay high up in the glaciers that fed the Bhilangana, and its tributary, the Balganga, but because it already had a name, The Uttarkashi Earthquake, it was to Uttarkashi that the relief trucks went.

If you want to explore the eastern fingers of the damage, go to Silyara*, we were told, to Sundar Lal Bahuguna’s ashram. Daylight had already abandoned the Balganga valley when we reached the ashram, as had electric power. Vimla behen received us, with little fuss, and an abundance of grace.

“We can’t offer you much, but we will find you a place to sleep.”

“We’ve already eaten”, we demurred.

Following the glow of Vimla-behen’s kerosene lamp, we picked our way through what remained of the ashram. The floors were askew, roof beams stuck out at odd angles, like broken limbs waiting for a doctor’s attention. There was an odd serenity about these spaces, in the light flickering from behind smoky chimneys. It was the night of Diwali.

In the morning, we got chai amid the devastation, and asked to be pointed to the most remote villages, where aid was least likely to have been received. Three hours up the sharp ridges that define the valley of the Balganga, we came to a village washed in the magical light of late autumn. Perched on roof-ridges, fat pumpkins were turning golden, cattle were tethered in the open, women tended fires on the flagstones of their courtyards, while children played around them, feet unshodden, clothes in rags.

We were a curious sight, five city folk, emerging out of the forest, onto the terraces of their village. The men greeted us, each namaste inflected with a question mark. We explained ourselves - we want to understand how much the eathquake has damaged your homes, try to help in any manner.

“Seventeen days after the earthquake, you are the first people to visit our village.”.

Escorted by a small knot of men, we climbed through the village, looking down upon a scene of devastation, at complete odds with the pastoral scene that had greeted us. Row upon row of slate had been dislodged from splintered rafters, laying entire homes open to the elements. Side walls had collapsed, large cracks had emerged in the mud plaster of interiors. We estimated that two-thirds of the homes were severely damaged.

“Severe or not, none of us are sleeping indoors. There have been so many tremors after the big one - we don’t dare.”

Up near the ridge, the air was already turning cold. Winter rains could come at any time. Would heavy tarpaulins be of any use, we asked. Yes. We estimated the village would need seventy-one tarps, if memory serves me right.

“If the kids need shoes, I want sizes”, my sister, Kanika, had instructed us.

“And gender, for clothes.”

Into school notebooks, we entered a census of the village as we counted heads and assessed sizes - men and women, boys and girls, bracketed into age groups.

“Is there another village on this ridge?” we asked, as we made to go.

“No, just jungle.”

“We’ll be off then, and back soon.”

Sit, they insisted, and steel thalis were laid before us - you haven’t eaten since you came.

But with all this devastation….?

We still have to cook, and you have to eat. So matter of fact, yet intensely moving.

Getting down to the valley was a lot faster, and by mid-afternoon, we were at the Tehri post office, in the old habitation, now submerged by the vast reservoir of the Tehri dam. Kanika had asked for our status report, post-haste, so she could put numbers to the urgent aid required, and the process of fund-raising could begin.

“The trunk call will take two-three hours to come through”, the girl at the counter told us.

We drove a couple of kilometers out, to a picturesque spot on the Balganga, to gather our thoughts, and digest the biscuits we had bought in Tehri market.

“How cold do you think the water is?”, I asked Sushil.

“Must be bloody frigid, Man”.

I slipped off my shoes and went in, ankle-deep.

“It’s, er, bracing!”

A beat.

“Let’s do it!”

We shed our sweaters and shirts, stripped down to our jocks, and jumped in, squealing with the cold.

“You guys!” Anita shook her head.

Kalyan stroked his moustache, his dark eyes gleaming with our joy, and pulled at his cigarette.

We were out in seconds, but:

“We can do it, Man. I’m sure we can cross the river.”

By our third try, our bodies were numb to the cold, and rose to the challenge of riding the mid-stream current, hauling ourselves up to the other shore. Kalyan raised his hand in a cheer. Before the adrenalin wore off, we churned our way back to our friends.

“Shit! No towel, Man - our clothes will never dry.”

Someone lit an ineffectual fire, and in my jocks I stood in front of it, trying not to tremble. Sushil gave up, donned my sweater, hand-knit from coarse Shetland wool, and shivered. Violently. Visibly. In a photograph that is lost to time, you could see my chin perched on the top of his head. His body - my sweater - was a blur of Scots sheep.

I laughed through my chattering teeth.

“Fuck, you’re shivering, Man.”

“Thermogenesis”, he stuttered, parading his medical training.

Post Script:

Back in Delhi, we put together a coalition of trekkers, development professionals, and concerned citizens, raised some fifteen lakhs, and through November and December, distributed aid materials to seven remote villages across the Balganga and Bhilangana ranges, where no aid, official or voluntary, had reached. Vimla Bahuguna, and - later - Sundarlal Bahuguna were of immense support.

In Chamiyala village, a few kilometers upstream from Silyara, we found an eager young collaborator, Trepan Singh, who grew into a committed, idealistic activist and social worker.

Several years later, in the early days of the Right To Information (RTI) movement, Kanika and I escorted Aruna Roy and Nikhil De to Chamiyala village. Trepan had organised a Jan-Sunvai, a People’s Enquiry, where local officials were invited to share progress reports on public works that had been approved by the Block Development Office. Sundarlal Bahugana presided.

In August 2020, Trepan Singh passed away, only 48 years old, of Motor Neurone Disease. Sundarlal Bahuguna, too, is no more.

Sushil and I did some epic swims together. But that’s material for other stories…

The Bhilangana, and the Balganga: