RIVER RAGA

TALES FROM A 2,700 KM TRAIL ALONG THE GANGA WITH COMPOSER SHANTANU MOITRA

- SHREYA CHEEMA

THERE ARE SO MANY STORIES ABOUT the Ganga. We all read about it...it is the 'mighty' river after all. But I wanted to see for myself why it is special," said music composer Shantanu Moitra when I asked him why he chose to cycle the length of the Ganga in 2020.

The National Award-winning composer is no stranger to adventure. His decision to decode what gives the river its unique character took hold of him during his 100-day expedition across the Himalayas with photographer Dhritiman Mukherjee in 2018. “We travelled from Kashmir to Tibet and everywhere, we came across tributaries of the Ganga or references to her,” he said.

But this curiosity and love for travel are just as much an ode to his late father, who hailed from Benaras. “My father passed away during Covid. I didn't get a chance to say goodbye, and that was hard, but this loss also gave me a sense of urgency. I hoped that reaching his city would give me closure,” he said. The 2,700 km journey completed over 70 days gave Moitra more than that.

Moitra started his journey from Gaumukh, the snout of the Gangotri glacier and the source of the Bhagirathi, a major tributary of the Ganga. It is here that Moitra's worries faded as the river whispered its first lesson. “The sight was surreal. Seeing the drops of the water trickle down from the glacier, starting as a tiny stream before becoming a mighty river, was profound. It made me realise that big things often start small,” he said. Moitra's trail included pitstops at Rishikesh, Narora, Kanpur, Varanasi, Patna, Bhagalpur, Murshidabad, and Kolkata.