The summer of the Kumbh Mela, I was reading a story in the newspaper about a herd of wild elephants. Their forest had been chopped down by developers, so they left to live in another one north of Delhi. Years later, the elephants heard the echo of trees falling again. They recognized the yellow bulldozers. But this time, as the developers slept, the elephants dragged all of their equipment and threw it off a nearby cliff.
In Rishikesh the sky is split with its own light. From the ghat our flames are drifting down the river at dusk, stuck in eddies and circling pools, snagged in the tree roots that line the banks. The sadhus robes cover the steps in orange and they sing and clap their hands in unison. Their robes were once white. All around them is the smoke of the pyre.
The train sped across the Deccan plateau heading towards Hyderabad. In the compartment next to me are old soldiers in their 80's, called freedom fighters by this young man who said he was a politician. His friend, a grandson of one of the soldiers, told me about his home in Warangal.
Do you know why India has remained whole after all of these years? How can we speak different languages and continue to call each other Indian even though we can't understand each other? My mother, when she went down to the Godavari, near Warangal, to do her ceremonies she called it Ganga. This is why we understand each other. All of our rivers are Ganga.
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Mar 18, 11:51 PM