https://www.wired.com/story/india-ganges-river-clean-project/
"In the mornings in Varanasi, the air on the banks of the Ganges fills with the
scent of burning bodies. On the steps of the Manikarnika
ghat—the holiest of
the city’s stepped riverbanks, upon which Hindu dead are cremated—the fires are
already lit, and mourners assemble by the hundred to accompany their loved ones
at the end. Pyres of sandalwood (for the rich) and mango wood (for everyone
else) are already burning; on one, a corpse wrapped in white is visible in the
flames.
Down at the river, where I’m watching from a boat, some families are engaged in
the ceremonial washing of their dead, the corpses shrouded in white linen and
decorated with flowers. A few meters away, a man from another family (usually,
the honor is bestowed on the eldest son) wades into the water, casting in the
ashes of an already cremated relative so that the Ganges might carry their
spirit onwards to the next life or even moksha, the end of the rebirth cycle,
and transcendence.
The funeral ceremonies, held against the backdrop of the ancient city, are
undeniably beautiful; but the same can’t be said of the river itself. The
water’s surface is flaked with ashes; ceremonial flowers linger in the eddies.
Just downstream, a couple of men are diving for discarded jewelry. Not 50
meters upstream, another group, having finished their rites, are bathing in the
filthy water. An older man, clad in white, finishes his bathing with a
traditional blessing: He cups the fetid Ganges water in one hand and takes a
sip.
The Ganges is one of the most densely populated river basins in the world,
providing water for an estimated 600 million people. But to Hindus, it is more
than a waterway: It is Ma Ganga, the mother river, formed—according to the
sacred text the
Bhagavata Purana—when Lord Vishnu himself punctured a hole in
the universe and divine water flooded into the world. Water from the Ganges is
widely used in Hindu prayer and ceremony; you can buy plastic bottles of it
from stalls all over the subcontinent—or order one on Amazon in the UK for as
little as £3.
And yet despite its sacred status, the Ganges is one of the most contaminated
major rivers on earth. The UN has called it “woefully polluted.” As India’s
population has exploded—in April 2023, it overtook China to become the world’s
most populous country—hundreds of millions of people have settled along the
Ganges’ floodplain. India’s sanitation system has struggled to keep up. The
Ganges itself has become a dumping ground for countless pollutants: toxic
pesticides, industrial waste, plastic, and, more than anything, billions upon
billions of liters of human effluent."
Via
Positive.News
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
