Negotiating the "River": Intercultural Interactions and Interventions

I would like to reflect on the river as a metaphor of cultural exchange in the larger context of intracultural interactions and interventions in theatre. By the "intracultural" I mean those exchanges within, between, and across regions in the larger framework of a nation. In our search for "other cultures" we often forget the cultures within our own boundaries, the differences which are marginalized and occasionally silenced in our imagined homogeneities. We also tend to valorize our own metaphors of "culture," ignoring its multiple resonances to different communities. Keeping this in mind, I would acknowledge that the river is not just a metaphor of cultural exchange, nor is it merely a geographical phenomenon. To millions of Indians, it represents the most sacred site of numerous pilgrimages. At an archetypal level, rivers are at once the abodes and the personifications of deities, the sources of creation. The very names of rivers are like mantras: Ganga, Jamuna, Saraswati-the "invisible" Saraswati because she flows underground, where she meets her sisters in the most sanctified confluence of the sangam. It is at this mingling of waters where millions of pilgrims converge to immerse themselves in the waters, only to reemerge with a deep sense-or is it an illusion?-of being rejuvenated. What makes this moment so moving is its capacity to dissolve differences, cutting across class, caste, and community. But this "dissolution" is provisional. Once the pilgrims return to their respective homes, the hierarchies and violence of everyday life are reinstated.