Sunday, November 16, 2014

GANGA RIVER is not just a river of water?


National Geographic and NPR did a study few years ago :
Photo: The story of Ganga. The river Ganga resided in the sky ( the milky way ) and was called Akashganga. On earth, king Bhagirath wanted to revive his dead sons by washing away their sins. He prayed to Lord Bharma, who in turn asked Ganga to come to the earth (Prithvi). However, if the great river would have fallen from the sky directly, it would have destroyed the land, so Lord Shiva, stood on Mt Meru in the Himalayas and allowed it to fall from the sky to his matted locks of hair and then he slowly let her flow out of the Himalayas, onto the land and into the ocean. My grandmother always said - Ganga is not just a river, she is a mother, a goddess and much much more. But I always wondered, what makes the Ganga so special ? It will probably take a life time to understand the mysticism of the scared river,but this article helped me begin my quest. National Geographic and NPR did a study few years ago : "Hollick speaks with DS Bhargava, a retired professor of hydrology, who has spent a lifetime performing experiments up and down Ganges in the plains of India. In most rivers, Bhargava says, organic material usually exhausts a river's available oxygen and starts putrefying. But in the Ganges, an unknown substance, or "X factor" that Indians refer to as a "disinfectant," acts on organic materials and bacteria and kills them. Bhargava says that the Ganges' self-purifying quality leads to oxygen levels 25 times higher than any other river in the world." http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17134270 How have we managed to pollute something so sacred is beyond me. But I really do hope we are able to clean it and bring it back to its pristine form. This soul stirring song by Bhupen Hazarika is more relevant today than ever before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Foa2jv0sIcw ~ Poonam Patil Kalra
"Hollick speaks with DS Bhargava, a retired professor of hydrology, who has spent a lifetime performing experiments up and down Ganges in the plains of India. In most rivers, Bhargava says, organic material usually exhausts a river's available oxygen and starts putrefying. But in the Ganges, an unknown substance, or "X factor" that Indians refer to as a "disinfectant," acts on organic materials and bacteria and kills them. Bhargava says that the Ganges' self-purifying quality leads to oxygen levels 25 times higher than any other river in the world."Hollick's search for a scientific explanation for the X factor leads him to a spiritual leader at an ashram and a biologist in Kanpur. But his best answer for the Ganges' mysterious substance comes from Jay Ramachandran, a molecular biologist and entrepreneur in Bangalore.
NPR.ORG

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