Pursuit

Mahaseer is a popular fresh water fish. It is found abundantly in India and many parts of South east Asia. It is a fresh water fish, living mostly in rivers and fresh water lakes. Mahaseer derives its name from Maha-seer meaning big head. Angling/ fishing for Mahaseer is now a recognised sport with camps that have come up in Ganga, Kaveri amongst many other places.

Mahaseer is usually found in plenty around Rishikesh and Haridwar in the gentle waters. However, once a year, during the monsoons, when Ganga swells up from a gentle Mandakini (one that moves slowly) to a torrent with strong downstream currents, these Mahaseers begin their journey upstream supposedly to the place where they were born themselves. They swim up into the small streams that feed the Ganga to find crevices and corners to lay their roe.

It is like a genetic map is hardwired into them that pull them back towards the origin, despite the perils that they face in the raging river that sometimes carries boulders and copious amount of silt and down its path. Not to mention the predators. I have often wondered whether all of us also have this desire to go back to our sources hardwired into us. All of us, in some form and magnitude, overtly or in sub consciousness are faced with the question of - Who am I?

At some point in time, we go back to the place where we were born to trace our origins or may be to the place where we finally could make sense of the world around us or to that place that makes us just happy. Some trace their family roots - going back to ancestral villages and homes in their quest while many a men since the time of legends have pondered about roots of the entire human race. The schools of thought that have emerged are two – one look outside and the other look within.

It always intrigues me that people would take pilgrimage tours visiting shrines in spite of physical and emotional discomfort, while arguing all the time that God lies within each and every one of us. May be it is to reaffirm to ourselves that our individual beliefs are in sync with the society at large. Or may be we seek some inspiration at these shrines. But, what we set out to seek, to discover, lies within us in the first place and we know that, then why the journey?

Pilgrimage as one definition reads 'A long journey or search, especially one of exalted purpose or moral significance.' In my understanding, the exalted purpose is self discovery which tries to find a justifiable answer to ourselves to the question – Who am I? It certainly is a long journey, sometimes even life long. And in this journey some put their faith in God and some in skepticism and surprisingly (or not) both can be equally strong motivators in the pursuit of self discovery.