Life along the Ganges

Last week National Public Radio (NPR) ran a series by Philip Reeves entitled The Ganges: A Journey into India:  "India's holy Ganges River travels 1,550 miles from the Himalayas and across the plains of north India before spilling into the Bay of Bengal. A five-part series explores life along the river: its extremes of ancient and modern, rural and urban, and rich and poor."  The NPR web site has pictures from Peter Foster and Heathcliff O'Malley's Holy River, a Trip down the Ganges from the Telegraph.

The NPR series begins in Devprayag, a town with many Hindu priests and holy men, where two mountain rivers merge to form the Ganges.  Not far downriver, middle-class employees of India's largest mobile phone company, Airtel, relax with white-water rafting.  The series continues with stops in Varanasi, one of the holiest cities in Hinduism; Mokama, a poor, crime-plagued city; Calcutta (Kolkata), a city known for poverty now remaking itself into a hub for information technology; and finally Sagar Island, where the Ganges enters the Bay of Bengal, and where a poor Muslim woman searches the beach for coins tossed into the Ganges by Hindu pilgrims.

Although the NPR series is based on a trip, the emphasis is on the civilization and social conditions of the area; consequently, the work is classed in 954.1 History of Northeastern India (9 plus T2--541 Northeastern India, according to the instructions under 930-990 History of ancient world; of specific continents, countries, localities; of extraterrestrial worlds).  In Table 2, the Ganges River is named in an including note at T2--541 Northeastern India.  It has an asterisk that links to the note: "For a specific part of this jurisdiction, region, or feature, see the part and follow instructions under T2--4-9."  Comprehensive works on the Ganges are classed in T2--541, but specific parts are classed with the part, e.g., Devprayag in T2--5451 Uttaranchal (Uttarakhand), Varanasi in T2--542 Uttar Pradesh.  Mokama (T2--54123 Bihar), Calcutta (T2--54147 Calcutta), and Sagar Island (T2--5414 West Bengal) are all classed in subdivisions of the comprehensive number for the Ganges River.

Comments

[sbarnes]

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