To let go...
It is a place to rest, a place to let go and rejuvenate.
- To allow the fast flowing waters to cleanse us of the dead or the dying - loved ones, our unfulfilled needs, wants and desires. There is much to discard, to leave behind in this river, the waters of which as so many say, remain forever clean and pure.
Carrying our burdens of grief, pain and sadness we light earthen lamps, diyas, and place them on the leaf-boats of the holy peepal tree and to let them float away on the rushing waves as they flow past the banks.
Legends have it that these help light the wave home for the souls of the departed. Each such diya bobbing away on the waves carries within it remnants of the pain and grief that has accompanied each passing and is now cast away into these waters.
For dreams that died and unfulfilled desires too, this becomes a final act of giving up and letting them go, to let the fast flowing waves carry them away to their last places of rest.
This watching of each such diya rush away on the fast, turbulent waves of the Ganga is the bidding of a final goodbye to all that is gone - and with it, tired and spent, when we immerse ourselves in the cold water of the river, we let go of any vestiges of remaining regret, emerging refreshed, rejuvenated and perhaps with a hollow feeling, an emptiness, a void which only time will fill.
