The Flow

The other day I came across a photograph on my Facebook newsfeed. It was a photograph of a river. It should have been a perfectly ordinary experience, after all, people post scenic photographs all the time on social media. But it wasn't one of those photos. This one was special. It was a photo of the Ganga as seen from Baghbazar, Kolkata, the same city I name whenever I need to mention my postal code. Here's why it was so stirring- I had forgotten that there was a river in my city. And that unexpected recollection filled me with wonder.

A few nights later I had a dream in which I was going back to college as a student again, riding the metro- except that in my dream it was a cross between a metro and a tram and it used the streets as its path. But dreams are always a little meddled, aren't they? And so, during my journey, my streetcar crossed Baghbazar and I saw the river again, a little muddy, but calm, serene and yet flowing in a definite direction. I had forgotten about the momentary miracle of the photograph, but this dream reminded me of it again. I've been thinking about the river since then.

I've always loved rivers, though I've never quite lived by a river. Some of my favourite places in my travels have been places with swift, flowing rivers- the waters gushing and breaking on pebbles in infinite patterns that are made and remade at every instant- Harshil, Vishnuprayag, Ghangoria, RudraPrayag, Pahalgaon- even the slow wide river of Hrishikesh and Hardwar- that opens up the view and widens one's view of the world. Rivers offer a window into the landscape, an open space with a possibility of change and a sense of adventure. In Jungian psychology, the river embodies the flow of life, the promise of a direction- something I had forgotten while being caught up in the general landlocked vista of my day-to-day life. And sometimes it happens- we lose sight of our inner river- and there's no water anywhere, and so we pretend we're not thirsty at all. And then we take an unfamiliar turning on the road, and we're confronted with what we had forgotten, the known city becoming a stranger in her unexpected beauty, and we feel the joy of  remembrance.

          It's a long road down to the sea, and the river is slower in the great plains, but it's important to know that it's just hiding by the corner. And we may not know the destination or even the direction yet, but we'll get there.

(Stock image from Dreamstime.Com)