Bhagirath

Will you call yourself Bhagirathi

If I dare bring you down to the plains?

Are you ready to offer the privilege of the Namesake,

If I deign to dance to the music of our souls?

It is this folly that tells me I am not human enough to decipher the scrolls alone –

The roadblocks, laws mystical and those of basic science –

In order to decode the mighty Himalayas.

Thus, like an ancient civil engineer at play,

I should turn your tide a degree or two to manoeuvre

Your dire motives as you rush along,

Emancipated by the will of gravity and the strength of my call.

My ancestors you must redeem at last of Kapila’s words,

Let peace be unto them.

I bring you down to fulfil a promise to my kingdom -

To end the years of accumulating sins

Plaguing my rotten Kosala.

No Elsinore revenge shall bring it peace but I –

Bhagirath –

Who would bring you to us and begin anew

The process of neural regeneration.

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As impossible a task as it would be,

I would undoubtedly be cornered by doubt –

The draught conjures nightmares for

The thirsty souls to behold – obliterating the

Memories of struggle,

Through generations; centuries of effort

So the droplets –

The princes of King Sagar return to the sea –

Moksha.

Your icy shackles they won’t budge without

The piercing warmth of a splintered ore

Which will drive you insane.

You will scare those that stand below,

Fearful and uncertain, no stranger to the

Aeons of wrath in your core.

It is then, O Ganga,

It is then that I will turn to the Lord,

The Lord of the living and the dead,

Of creation and destruction itself,

Who will gift you the riddle

Of a dreadlock

To pause –

So you set aside your rage –

And wonder at the crystals of life:

The births, the sugar granules,

The diamonds, the hearts,

The ashes; a singular snowflake.

It is only then that life can continue apace

As we were meant to.

The sixty thousand sons of King Sagar

Will return to the sea of light

To begin their journey outwards anew:

To become

Rains on the green shawl you drape by the quaint riverside,

During a Shravan evening.

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