h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oh , Look at the sea , Isnt it nice !!! , This is what a friend's kid exclaimed out loud when we were taking a little hike in her car the other day !!! , Only that we live in a place called Bangalore and there is no river in sight , leave alone a Sea , What Abhi was actually describing was a tiny little puddle ( man made at that ! ) which was formed when the guys there were pulling out earth from one place and depositing in another and rain water had occupied its rightful place ...
There were a few adults in the car along with Abhi and we grasped the oppurtunity to smile at his childlike description and his mom lovingly explained the the concept of a sea to him ,
This woke up Jai and he told a nice little story of his own .
Anyone born in North India would know the river Ganga like his ABC's ( well a little better than that because the Northies are notorious English speakers ,Ask any Southie and he will vouch for this )
And So Jai grew up on a staple diet of reverence and stories of the Gangaji , ( For the uninitiated , Ji is a surname which denotes Respect , Something like calling your own river , Lord Thames !!)
His Mom probably would have told him countless stories about Gangaji and little Jai's mind would have been filled with those , So whenever jai's Mom would take him on a visit to his maternal GrandFather's home which is in Kanpur Jai would see innumerable tiny little ponds and lakes and suddenly tell his mom "Ma , Gangaji Aagayi " ( Translated into " Gangaji came ! , Gangaji Came" ) , I guess Jai's mom would have had a tough time explaining about the finer nuances about differences between rivers and ponds to him , I decipher this because Jai himself told me that he could remember this incident even now as if it happened
yesterday and Jai is 26 now)
Not sure whether this story makes any sense to be seen in this forum but I liked it then because it tells a few things first
about the people around the Ganga , How they love and respect it and are moved enough to refer to it in the plural .
The second is that to the kid's mind Water is water , No matter what shape or size it comes in , and then he grows up
and get to hear from people that this is a sea and that is a river and that one there is a lake , Similar to the way we
knew all along that people were people and then grew up and figured out that that is a Muslim , This is a Black Guy ,
The other one there , Dont talk to him because he is a mallu and mallu's are generally selfish ,

Nice story. I like that.

Gangaji no doubt has the wisdom to know that, despite the differences, water really is water and people really are just people. Rivers have their own characters due to the places they have been and all that they have experienced. If the Nile were to have an adventure in the Himalayas, it would have a lot to share with Gangaji by the time they reach the Bay of Bengal. Still, it took Gangaji a long time to become so wise. Perhaps in time people will also become wise. We could learn a lot from rivers.

JTG