- Yeah. Yeah, that... I could not agree more. There are some problems with, Ganger because he was so tall he couldn't ride the little Viking ponies. So he had to walk everywhere. But... Kinda poor probably raised on stories of
This is the Ganges we are talking about. Ganges is-- we talk about her since eternity.It's in our mythology.
And we wondered, why a river-- and this is not just a river. This is the Ganges we are talking about. Ganges is-- we talk about her since eternity.
And along the way, he lost all of his possessions and his diaries at least five times, sometimes just washed away by the River Ganges . And yet, when you read this book, you'll be struck by how striking is his recall of minute details, going back 20, 30 years.
But I wasn't prepared that I was actually going to a part of Nepal that I didn't know existed called the Terai, the flat lowlands. It's the extension of the Gangetic Plain that is only 600 feet elevation. And this gives you a sense of it.
Hi, thanks for speaking, first of all. you're a swami on the Ganges in India, you know, and you're meditating.
Voila, you've turned a relationship of violent inequality into a relation where the victims are running around feeling inadequate all the time, making terrible apologies for themselves terms it happens in the Ganges Plain in Northern India and in the plains of Northern China, Ganges Valley, I'm sorry.
So you would understand what happens to the rest of the work that is there-- the farms to be tilled and other work So they would cremate their dead beside the river Ganges .
And after that, I'll run through a quick presentation, and then we can have a Q&A. So I'll just start with this film. Kolkata-- a densely populated metropolis on the banks of the Ganges , sustaining the livelihood of millions, a city that has blended modernization with glorious history, life on the move,
It's in this book. I was sitting on the back of the Ganges River one day. It was summer, the month of May in India.
We'll find it everywhere. I was sitting on the bank the River Ganges . It was the summer, very hot, probably 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
I was just a common human in search of a river-- my river. This is the Ganga, known as Ganges in the rest of the world. We used to holiday by this river.
In the evenings, they'll come down to the river's edge, the Ganges , and light the candles and offer them to the waters, because the waters, the sacred waters of the Ganges , represents the gods. The gods, the Hindu gods, reside in the Himalayas, from which the Ganges comes from.
Sometimes in the middle of the day, I still feel depressed. So what I'll do is I'll drive down to the Mother Teresa house on the Ganges River. And I'll pour soup into the mouths of those less fortunate than me.
How do we get people to know about this? If we go down and tell them, there is no Ganges , they'll say, what are you talking about? Ganga has been there for so long.
And with very, very basic equipment, we set out to meet people who have been working in this area of water and rivers for decades. This is another shot of AsiGanga, which is another tributary of the Ganga-- the Ganges -- up in the mountains-- no water at all. So we began our meeting-- a person called Himanshu Thakkur.
So you would understand what happens to the rest of the work that is there-- the farms to be tilled and other work But there's more. There's social and cultural impact of a disappearing Ganges .
That only happened one time. Where was that? That was on the banks of the Ganges . And it's very common for people to be cremated.
charge at each other but instead all their energy went into this like little space in between their hands and they would trade cubes and scramble them and since I had a wristwatch I was the designated referee um I just got kind of got you know press ganged into this and as a result I got to watch them do it over and over and over and cubing attracts some very competitive personalities and Toby is certainly no
And I'll end with one little story that I love to tell. Years ago, I was sitting on the bank of the river Ganges . It was a summer day.
It was probably 120 degrees, with not a single cloud in the sky. And no one-- even though this was a very holy place, the place where the Ganges , and the Yamuna, and Saraswati, three rivers meet, because of the heat, one was there except me.
He was swimming around with his friends and with his relatives, and looking for some food, and finding food, and playing, and swimming upstream, and downstream, and across stream. And just like any other day, enjoying the beautiful underwater vegetation of the Ganges . And suddenly, the hawk of fate ripped that little fish out of its complacency.
to be given legal standing. So in Aotearoa in New Zealand, the Whanganui River, sacred to local Maori people, has been given legal rights, legal personhood, or the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India.
So these men were caught red handed. But by the time they landed in Hamburg, their defense lawyers had statements prepared claiming they were just poor fishermen and they'd been press ganged by real pirates and stuff like that. And again, that's a common story, and it has something to do with the roots of Somali piracy.
And not just talk-- the media doesn't discuss about it. People like us, common people who just go about our daily lives-- we don't know that there is no Ganges up in the mountains. So nobody's talking about this.
And during the annual Magh Mela we took a boat out onto the water at sunset, at the sacred confluence of the Three Rivers, the Ganges ,
And then this daughter, who was the most precocious one in the pack, got ganged up on by these two
or banyan leaves pressed into the shape of bolts. In the evenings, they'll come down to the river's edge, the Ganges , and light the candles and offer them to the waters, because the waters, the sacred waters of the Ganges , represents the gods.
because the waters, the sacred waters of the Ganges , represents the gods. The gods, the Hindu gods, reside in the Himalayas, from which the Ganges comes from. So there's a beautiful history and tradition that I try to capture in a single photo.
If we go down and tell them, there is no Ganges , they'll say, what are you talking about? Ganga has been there for so long. So we said, OK, let's make a film about it.