Bends in the Ganges

In the course of history, religion has led to tectonic shifts in not just human behaviour through the introduction of rituals and customs but also influenced the general cultural and socio-political landscape.

- Chittajit Mitra

Siddharth Kapila in his debut book Tripping Down the Ganga: A Son’s Exploration of Faith takes us through his yatra across several prominent Hindu sacred sites along the holy river Ganga and tries to portray an experience rather a mere travelogue or memoir.

Mr Kapila begins his journey of writing this book with an act of renunciation by quitting his career in law. India, as we know, has been a land of religious renouncers, and Mr Kapila’s decision to follow a similar path (though his act is a professional one) seeks to find some meaning in this fast-paced, internet-driven world by documenting his visits to seven prominent religious sites along Ganga and recreating a long lost past. As often happens in families, the author used to accompany his mother, who was deeply religious, on her yatras from an early age in the 1990s, and he uses his memory from those visits to compare those experiences with his journeys from 2015 to 2022. The result is a series of interesting encounters with different kinds of people and revelations of several histories and mythologies that these places have carried with themselves.