Goddess of the River by Vaishnavi Patel

Author:Vaishnavi Patel [PATEL, VAISHNAVI]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2024-05-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

GANGA, MANY DECADES BEFORE THE WAR

EVENTUALLY, SHANTANU DIED. HE had been old for a raja even when I knew him, and now decades had passed. I heard he was ill one week and by the next he was gone. But there was no emotion in it for me. Devavrata—Bhishma—had chosen to entrench himself in the mortal world, so Shantanu was no longer an obstacle. It was the whole of humanity that kept my son away from me.

They brought Shantanu’s ashes to me, a whole mourning funeral procession, and announced that by the order of his son, the ashes would be scattered in my river. I could not figure out which of the men assembled at my banks was his son, the man for whom Devavrata had sacrificed everything.

When they poured his ashes, I made them disappear immediately into the sea so they would not linger in my waters. The assembled crowd gasped and whispered, until one of the sages stepped forward and declared that the River Ganga had purified the king’s remains, bearing him on to the next stage of life.

A few days later, Vichitravirya was crowned king. He had survived to adulthood over his older, stronger brother, because he was too weak to fight as an adolescent in the kingdom’s endless wars. The elder heir, Chitrangada, pride of the family, had ridden out to battle and been cut down. He left behind Satyavati’s ill and feeble second son, the one being groomed for a quiet life, to take the throne.

Since Shantanu’s death, the mortals of Hastinapur had begun to worship me, and it seemed every other day they bathed in my waters or sent ashes into my currents. They seemed to believe I could purify a soul, that I would do it for anyone regardless of their deeds or intents.

I was angry at this world for what it had done with my son, and I knew that every human was complicit. They all hurt one another in their selfishness, in a constant, unbroken chain. And yet I could not help my curiosity.

When the desperate woman appeared on my shores, I took notice. She was dressed in a fine sari torn and caked with mud, and she came on foot through a dark patch of forest north of Hastinapur. She bathed quickly in my waters, rinsing from her stick-thin body the dirt of the road and scrubbing clean her lank and lifeless hair. She looked as though she had not had a proper meal in moons—and likely she hadn’t, if her behavior was any indication. Then she sat a foot from my waters and prayed, and I wondered if she would unburden herself. But she did not, and after a day she left. I thought that was the end of it, but then she returned with some fruit and continued her prayer. Every day for a week she rose with the sun to pray until at last, fed up with her, I decided to listen to her soft murmurs.

“River Ganga,” she murmured to herself.

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