Glimpses of the River Hooghly
The first light strikes the water smashing the surface
into a thousand watery splinters. At the ghats along the river
into a thousand watery splinters. At the ghats along the river
the poor, the homeless, wade in waist deep,
washing their clothes as the sun rises.
Small boats flit past like gnats on the surface,
barely skimming the dark currents.
As the tide ebbs, figures emerge from the river.
They stand at the burning ghats
where the funeral pyres subside,
to dry their clothes as the last flames flicker
and the ashes of the dead smoulder.
Wisps of smoke, like incense, rise as
the souls of the dead live on in the
rags of the poor.
The ghosts of the past opium clippers
with their array of masts and sails
lie at anchor beside the great
East Indiamen. Bales of raw cotton,
hemp, jute, indigo lie piled on the quay
ready to plough round the Cape on
that long haul back to London.
Smart memsahibs in Britain wore silks
and calico which had sailed down river,
from Calcutta with expert pilots,
the elite of the Bengal Marine Service.
Guided expertly to the mud- banked estuary,
then the safety of the open sea!
Now, the river is at its busiest in Autumn,
when the Goddess Durga comes home to
Kolkata with her four children.
Riding her fierce lion, her ten arms
holding the weapons of the gods,
she slays the demon King.
The clay images, modelled from
the Hooghly’s mud, return to the
river once again.
The festival at an end, the banks
are crowded – red, gold, blue, purple
silks, saris, gleaming white dhotis,
throng the riverside, like exotic butterflies.
The exquisite images now immersed in the river,
slowly dissolve, floating downstream with the ebb tide.
In the fading light, Durga is slowly, regally carried seaward,
her arms raised in a final blessing.
At the height of summer, the seawater will evaporate,
rain will fall on the high mountains; the gods will come home.
Next year Durga will return, as she has for centuries.
Empires may rise and fall, but the river flows on.
The battle will be fought yet again, next Fall.
Author: Sarah Das Gupta
Photo Credit: kazuend on Unsplash
Note: The Hooghly is a distributary of the Ganges. It flows into the Bay of Bengal. It serves the city of Kolkata (Calcutta) formally capital of British India. The Bengal Marine Service were British river pilots escorting merchant vessels on the Hooghly. East Indiamen were ships built from 17th to 19th centuries to carry cargo from Europe to East Indian ports – mainly Calcutta.
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