Rebirthing the River

Depictions of divine rivers are encoded in our subcontinent’s history- sensual and sacred, wide hipped and worthy of worship. Millions of years old, Ganga, Yamuna and (secret) Saraswati form foundations of holy ritual and timeless ceremony. However, in the last 200 years alone, they have become toxic, choked in plastics and dammed. Water has been taken for granted, much like the women they embody.

Rebirthing the River is a ritual performance that reinfuses reverence into our water bodies, asking the secret underground rivers to return to our barren lands (once again).

They say that seventeen thousand years ago- the Saraswati river used to flow through the Thar.
One day, tired of being taken for granted, she vanished and returned to her cosmic home in the stars and the land turned into a desert forevermore.
(What causes a river to vanish? What causes a woman to leave?)

Rebirthing the River imagines the utopic possibility that one day if water decided to return to the desert,- How would be treat her? Touch her?