River That Used to Be Sacred

I stayed there for a little while before I took this picture. This is the Bagmati river.

The same river where Pashupatinath lies, the same river that people burn their dead at, the same river that is said to carry us toward something sacred. But here, it's carrying garbage instead. Some parts, there is no river anymore - just a sheet of plastic bottles, bags and wrappers stuck so tightly to each other it looks as though one could walk on it.

The water that is visible is black.

People are walking along the banks, life goes on in the houses alongside, everyone else is carrying on with their life.

No one is even bothered to look down. All that was going through my mind was how this river is referred to in our sacred texts, how people come from so far away, all these rituals just to be close to it.

And what it actually is now - the waste which everyone has agreed to ignore. The waste does not only just stay in the water and pollute what lies underneath but also the air that it occupies.The smell, the gases, all of it goes into the air surrounding the riverbanks every day. We call it holy, and we use it as a sewer.