Review by Ajanta Paul
Ganga Sagar: Salvation by Water, an elegant and elaborate photo-essay on the many aspects of Gangasagar - the pilgrimage, the place and the passion - is a paean to the primordial power of the river Ganga in its multiple manifestations. Explored assiduously over years through repeated visits, the pilgrimage of Gangasagar, in its bewildering variety and rich complexity yields its elusive spirit to the faithful and visionary lens of the author/photographer, Sandipan Mukherjee.
It is to the author's credit that he never overworks his subject but allows it to tell its story, or rather, stories at its own pace, revealing and withholding its secrets according to its mood and will. This imparts to the book a mystique that defies facile interpretations and neat classifications. Gangasagar - the pilgrimage, the festival, the mass worship, the ceremonial ritual and lone supplication - is the culmination of a journey, and in some cases, a dream.
Located in an iconic riverine estuary, Sagar Island is caught in the cross currents of history, geography, geology, religion and mythology. A.F. Lacroix's “ephemeral city” on what the author describes as “desolate shores”, the origins of the pilgrimage and mela at Sagar are obscure, even apocryphal, at times, though empirical evidence such as coins, inscriptions, remnants of pottery and other artefacts and infrastructural ruins provide an idea of its successive phases of human habitation and general history.
Academic debate about the genesis of the Bhagirathi and the antiquity of Sagar Island notwithstanding, “archaeological evidences unearthed”, says the author, “since the reclamation of the island from the Sunderbans have now proven beyond doubt the existence of advanced civilizations in the area between 300 BC and 1200 AD”.
The photographs in the book, according to Sankarlal Bhattacharjee in his Foreword to the work strive to “arrest fleeting moments of the human drama that is Gangasagar Mela”. While for many “Bengalis Gangasagar is a site too close and too far”, according to him the whole of rural India converges on the delicate coastal ecology of this deltaic region during the days of the festival. Luminous and eloquent, the photographs are poems in shade, shape and colour, striving to express the soul of the ancient traditions of the fair.
Supplementing the photographs is a comprehensive textual commentary that includes insights on the history and mythology of Sagar Island, the logistics of the pilgrimage and details of the pujas and yajnas organized at the temple of Kapila Muni during Makara Sankranti. There are references to sacrificial offerings such as mundan and distinctive rituals like go-daan, Ganga puja, pitri tarpan and Baitarani-paar.
Charitable deeds by the pilgrims, yogic feats by the Naga sadhus, the stalls selling food items, daily necessities and souvenirs, the customs and superstitions, a breath of spirituality, the sensory overload, the chaos and the calm, the sheer energy and scale of the extraordinary exercise and the presence of government as well as non-governmental organisations have been masterfully portrayed through lavish photographs that celebrate the lush extravagance of the unique phenomenon.
The photographs make a deep visual impression and forge a creative connection with viewers through the frequent presence of multiple narratives in a single frame. The scene in the landscape on page 21, for instance, tells the story of a knot of women pilgrims through a stark evocation of the back of their covered heads in the foreground. The ominous, swirling clouds in the background improvise their own raga of an imminent storm while the water in the middle distance enacts its limpid drama of eternity.
The photographs in the book, in the rich diversity of composition and style conform to the landscape, portrait and documentary modes, detailing an amazing verisimilitude with a life lived on the edges of land and water, and in the core of faith. The title page, spectacular in its panoramic sweep, is a superb example of the landscape mode revelling in a mystical evocation of its primary subject - the journey to salvation.
Many of the photographs in this aesthetically produced coffee table book have the quality of a painting. Shaded colours, hazy outlines, a palpable atmosphere, the use of chiaroscuro and a subtle play of light all serve to achieve the interdisciplinary alliance referred to. There are numerous plates which bear out this contention; the photograph on page 69 is an illustrative example of this quality. The water in light and dark shades, a muted orange sun in a blurred sky, and two black figures on the shore paint a universal nostalgia with rare felicity.
The photographs on pages 37, 51, 69, 118 and 119, to name a few, are Impressionist in their blurred silhouettes and use of light. They are landscape photographs which explore the presence of nebulous human figures against a mystical expanse of ocean and sky, inevitably inducing philosophical speculation on birth, life and death. The softly shaded and hauntingly enigmatic photographs on pages 18 and 51 could well have been paintings by Claude Monet. The presence of painterly qualities, notwithstanding, the aesthetic method and the philosophical perspective of the photographer require a mode that is key to his medium, as Susan Sontag so perceptively reminds us, “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses”.
The documentary photographs on pages 53 to 68 and 70 to 117, in addition to numerous others in the book, are a glorious testimony to the myriad facets of life. They throb, for the most part, with the pulsating reality of a lived experience. The photograph on page 57, for instance, documenting a community meal captures the truth of the moment through an undeniable authenticity of mood and setting. The indistinct figure of a man inside his rudimentary tent on page 55 mediates the reality of his situation without a hint of manipulation while maintaining a mysterious air that adds to its intrinsic charm. This is in keeping with one of the stated objectives of the author who believed, “that a photograph - as an individual image or as a part of a narrative - should be able to establish some connection with the viewers on its own, without the help of elaborate captions”.
Some of the frames are lyrical in their leitmotifs of loss and loneliness. The misty landscape on page 18 with its barely discernible human figures trudging towards a hazy future, with the mendicant and his bowl in the foreground resonates with an almost surreal sense of uncertainty. Some are poignant pleas for redemption. An ineffable hope of rehabilitation clings to these visuals as those on the facing pages 118 and 119. While the subjects in the former seem to be searching for something, those in the latter are pulling forward resolutely in a setting not altogether conducive to their aspirations. Yet others are exquisite epiphanies of spiritual illumination. The very last photograph in the book, a portrait on page 144 with its subject in a path of sprinkled radiance in an otherwise bleak setting suggests an enlightenment beyond the bounds of ordinary experience.
At times, the human subjects seem utterly immersed in the ritual at hand as they are absorbed in the rhythm of renunciation. At others, they come across as vibrant beings, participating spontaneously in life's vivacious and variegated incidents. Sankarlal Bhattacharjee describes this vitality and dynamism as “an exquisite social drama replete with the finest details of custom, behaviour and norms.”
The portraits towards the end of the book, awash with colour and form, radiate an infectious energy as the subjects, seemingly caught offguard, afford a candid glimpse into their private world. The personal and the public are seen to coexist in interesting configurations of imagined spaces as subjects move fluidly between the two, negotiating the overwhelmingly communal and the resiliently individual.
Gangasagar: Salvation by Water is a handsome publication by Penprints in which the photographs have been reproduced with commendable fidelity to the original, making it a striking and evocative photo-narrative of a pilgrimage that has, of necessity, changed over the years but which remains essentially timeless in its perennial appeal.
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