‘Tripping Down The Ganga’: A son’s faith and scepticism, and the worship and neglect of the river

Few rivers bear the burden of a civilisation’s contradictions like the Ganga. It is worshipped as the holiest of waters, even as its banks are lined with sewage and garbage. It is invoked as the purifier of souls, even as it fails to cleanse itself. In Siddharth Kapila’s Tripping Down the Ganga: A Son’s Exploration of Faith, the river serves as both a narrative device and a metaphor for faith in motion, shifting and sedimented, eroding certainty even as it deposits conviction.

Kapila is no pilgrim, nor is he an outsider marvelling at the exoticism of the subcontinent. His journey from Gaumukh to Gangasagar is neither a discovery nor a rediscovery; it is a reckoning. Over seven years, from 2015 to 2022, he retraces his childhood yatras, now as an adult sceptical of inherited belief and yet tethered to its echoes. His mother, a devout tax lawyer, haunts these pages as a figure of deep contradiction, at once rational and superstitious, whose faith he both interrogates and begrudgingly respects.

A travelogue of contradictions

The Ganga holds a special place in the hearts of millions, shaping the communities along its banks, guiding merchants through its waters, and witnessing the rise and fall of empires that defined its identity. Kapila’s...

Read more

News