Slowly Down the Ganges. Eric Newby

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СКАЧАТЬ in Hardwar. He is indifferent to whether you take it or not. He also says that if you do not wish to have his boat why have you come to ask him for it? He is a villain.’

      ‘Can we see it?’

      ‘He says that you can see the boat but as there is only one he asks why it is necessary for you to see it. However, if you wish to do so he will accompany you. It is at his bridge.’

      ‘We don’t have to thank him, do we?’

      ‘It is unnecessary.’

      The bridge was at a place called Chandi Ghat,^* some little way downstream from the town. As we drove over the embankment built by the British on the right bank, we had our first view of the Ganges.

      It was a bit of a shock. It was December, the dry season, and the river which in the rains would have been a mile wide now ran sluggishly through a wasteland of sand and stones. Although it was already so far from its source, it was no more than 70 yards wide. Most of the water was being drawn into the Upper Ganges Canal which takes off just below Hardwar.

      It was a wooden bridge supported on piers of rough dry stone, and the roadway across it was covered with coarse grass. Bullock-carts with huge wooden wheels were creaking over it, towards us, loaded with bamboo from the jungle on the east bank and the drivers sat high up in the front of their vehicles like ships’ figureheads.

      Moving across the bridge in the opposite direction were hill people on their way up to Garhwal, carrying pack frames with enormous loads lashed to them. With their snub noses and slant eyes they were as different from the bullock-cart drivers, who were from the river bank, as visitors from outer space. Upstream from the bridge a number of flat-bottomed country craft, like small barges, were moored to the bank. Nowhere was the water more than two feet deep. Of the boat that we had come to see there was no sign.

      At this moment a number of men arrived at the water’s edge pushing a hand-cart on which there was a dead cow covered with a red cloth. They began to off-load it, intending to dump it in the river. Now, for the first time since we had met him, the contractor showed signs of emotion. It was obvious that if they succeeded in getting away with this ill-conceived burial the cow would remain stranded there, a source of embarrassment, until the end of June when the monsoon would come and wash it away and the bridge with it. He rushed to head them off. Soon the air was rent by angry cries and an interminable wrangle began.

      ‘You are Brahman. This is a sacred animal. She must go to Ganga!’

      ‘I am Brahman but you must take your sacred animal somewhere else!’

      While we were waiting for the dispute to end, we sat on a log outside the bridgekeeper’s hut which was made of reeds, and looked upstream. To the right, over the river, the jungle that once had teemed with wild animals – tigers, leopards, herds of elephants, sloth bear, wolves, nilgai, antelope, black buck and the terrible wild dog – jungle in which the Indian lion survived until the beginning of the nineteenth century – and which was still well stocked with poisonous snakes, cobras and karait – broke at the foot of the hills in a green hazy sea; while far to the north, seen through the deep trench that the Ganges had dug for itself through the foothills on its way to the plains in which we now found ourselves marooned, an impressive, snow-covered peak rose, shining in the sun.

      I asked what it was.

      ‘It is called Triyugi.’

      ‘What is Triyugi?’

      ‘Triyugi is from Treta Yuga.’

      ‘What is Treta Yuga?’

      ‘It is one part of Yuga.’

      ‘What is Yuga?’

      ‘Yuga is one age of the world. There are four Yugas and each is named after one god. There is Krita Yuga, Treta Yuga, Dwapara Yuga, and Kali Yuga. Age is preceded by period not light, not dark, called Sandhya and after it a further period called Sandhyansa, also not dark, not light. Each is equal to one-tenth of Yuga. Treta Yuga is three thousand years but with not so light, not so dark period, three thousand six hundred years. In Treta Yuga Ganga is most sacred. Altogether Yugas are twelve thousand years.’

      ‘Twelve thousand years isn’t all that long. The Ice Age was before that.’

      ‘Yes, but one year of god’s life in Yuga is three hundred and sixty years of man. Whole period is called Maba-Yuga. There are four million three hundred and twenty thousand years in Maha-Yuga.’

      ‘That’s still not very long.’

      ‘Ah, but two thousand Maha-Yugas make Kalpa and in Kalpa I am counting eight billion, six hundred and forty million years and Kalpa is only one day and one night of Brahma. After one day of life of Brahma world is consumed, except for wise men, gods and elements. Next day he recreates world and so on for hundred years until he too expires. His daughter is Sandhya, of the not light, not dark period, and with her he has much intercourse and in this way is father of all men.’

      ‘How long is that?’

      ‘I am not counting that number of years.’

      On the far side of the river, lying on its side on the stones, there was a rusty tin boat. It was sixteen feet long, and the bottom was as full of holes as a colander. It was like a lifeboat thrown up on the shore, the harbinger of a greater disaster. The thought of travelling 1,200 miles down the river in such a craft would have been laughable if any other boat had been available.

      ‘The contractor says that he will sell you his boat for fifteen hundred rupees.’ This was more than a hundred pounds.^*

      ‘What about the boats upstream?’

      ‘They only draw one foot but they are too broad and too heavy. Further down the river is very difficult, besides they cannot pass under this bridge.’

      ‘But you can see the daylight through this one.’

      ‘The contractor says that he will have it repaired; otherwise, he says you can have one built.’

      ‘How much will that cost?’

      ‘About three thousand rupees.’

      ‘How long will it take?’

      ‘About a month, perhaps more. It is difficult to say. He is not a friendly man.’

      For what seemed hours they haggled with him while he looked with far-away flinty eyes at the disconsolate little party of cowburiers, now specks on the shingle downstream. Finally, due to their pertinacity it was agreed that we should hire the boat to take us as far as Garhmuktesar, a place 100 miles downriver. This, together with the hire of boatmen and a lorry to send the boat back again (apparently it was impossible to travel upstream by boat), would come to more than 500 rupees. If each hundred miles of the journey was going to cost the equivalent of forty pounds in boat hire, we would be penniless long before we reached Calcutta. The alternatives were to buy the boat, abandon the first part of the journey, or walk it – all three were unthinkable.

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