To honour the memory of his father, composer Shantanu Moitra took a journey along the mighty river and found a way to transfigure grief into a life-affirming force.
By Akshaya Pillai
The river, like grief, doesn’t pause. Its rhythm is endless, elusive—slipping past rocks, winding through plains, carving valleys that carry the weight of centuries. Shantanu Moitra vividly remembers the house with steps that descended straight into the Ganga. He can still see it: his mother at dusk, arms lifted in aarti, the glow of diyas bobbing in the river’s current. He can, when he closes his eyes, hear the hum of temple songs from loudspeakers, mingling with children’s laughter scattered across the ghats. Even then, as a young boy visiting Benaras, witnessing birth rituals and funeral pyres on the ghats, he knew that the river was immense, inscrutable—a force to bow to. Years later, over a patchy phone line from his farmhouse in Pune, Moitra speaks of the river differently. No longer just a thread on the canvas of his childhood or a muse for his music, the river today is a mirror of loss, of resilience and of how life, no matter what, flows forward.
Moitra, a composer whose name stirs memories of the music of Parineeta, October, 3 Idiots, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi and most recently, 12th Fail, is also an adventurer. He has repeatedly found refuge in the world’s vastness and his travels have taken him from the heights of the Himalayas to the depths of the Ganga. These landscapes have given him space to breathe, to think, to recharge. But the loss of his father to Covid-19 changed that. The grief, unlike any silence he had known, demanded more. It needed motion, purpose and a deeper dive into life’s currents. So Moitra set out, the wheels of his bicycle meandering along the vast course of the Ganga, from its icy origins in Gomukh to the unbroken horizon of the Bay of Bengal. “I never had the chance to say goodbye to my father. He was going to come with me to Varanasi, his hometown. He kept telling me how this journey would be life-altering,” Moitra’s voice trails.
He knew the journey had to be deliberate and slow. Like a prayer. And so, he pedalled on, his team trailing close behind. He moved through days heavy with heat, through nights so dark the road seemed to disappear, but it was the river’s quiet presence, always nearby, that anchored him. “Gangotri to Gomukh is an arduous trek,” Moitra recalls, his voice carrying a trace of the fatigue he would have felt then. “My crew had never done this before. Everybody joined in, though, probably thinking, if this guy can do it, we can too.” They pushed through the strain together. “We were all exhausted, but it felt like somebody, or something, had come together to make this happen.”
Moitra carried his grief as he rode 2,700 kilometres. Along the way, he pressed it into tulsi-seed-infused paper, each sheet imprinted with photographs of lives lost to the pandemic, his father’s image among them. He buried these papers in the soil, letting the seeds wait for rain and sun. Offering grief back to the earth to be transformed into life. “This anantha yatra was not just for my father. It was for everyone who’d felt the weight of loss. I discovered first-hand how when grief is shared, it ebbs, paving the way for closure and renewal,” he says.
Moitra invited others to join him on the journey, a constellation of artistes to collaborate. “I didn’t focus on the merits of the singers. I didn’t want them because they are the best. My focus was on who they are apart from their singing.” He tells me about the parts these singers played during the lockdown. The kindness in the spaces between their music. Mohit Chauhan, who fed stray dogs; Taba Chake who would transport the needy to hospitals; Bombay Jayashree, who taught special children online; Kaushiki Chakraborty who imparted training in music to the young and uninitiated.
At this point Moitra takes a detour to tell me another story of when he was sitting outside a palace in Tibet. The air was still, the sun warm on his face. A monk approached him and asked, “What do you do?” Moitra fumbled. “I am a composer,” he replied, but it didn’t quite feel like it was enough. Not with the mountains in his heart, the roads he had travelled. The monk watched him, silent for a moment. “Imagine this is a composer,” he said as he placed his finger on the ground. It had grown breezier by now. “A gust of wind can topple you,” the monk said, alluding to the fragility of being. Then he placed two fingers in the soil. “Composer and traveller.” And the earth beneath them felt steadier. The monk added a third finger, a quiet boost of strength. “Now you are a composer, traveller and storyteller. It’s near impossible for the wind to bother you now.” Moitra pauses before telling me, “Human beings are programmed to be multitaskers.”
It is this strength, this balance, that carried him through the journey that followed, where music emerged naturally, guided by the river itself. On its banks, under open skies, the notes blended with the sounds of the water and the hum of life. By the time he reached the inner Himalayas, Moitra was ready to bring Chauhan—who joined him, no questions asked—into the fold. In Chauhan’s voice, Moitra finds “a beautiful reflection of the mountains.” In the faint light of the setting sun, they spoke about mountains and what they meant to the composer and the singer.
Songs of the River Ganga held its metaphors in silence and in sound. In one village, a drone specialist on Moitra’s team walked beside him up a steep hill, in quiet solidarity. In another, Moitra found himself recording a duet of water and wind with the vocals of Sid Sriram. Everywhere, the river left its signature. It was a teacher, too, revealing itself in small lessons.
When Moitra cycled through urban areas, the pollution of the cities served as a sharp reminder of the disconnection between nature and human progress. In Bihar, the chaos of Chhath Puja crowded the roads, choking them with dust. Moitra’s asthma flared but his team rallied around, carrying the hope that he might finish what he started. And just as the tension between the natural world and urban life began to mount, Moitra found himself in the midst of floods, with the folk music duo Maati Baani and indie singer-songwriter Taba Chake. The water surged and the journey became trickier. But even from this, a song was born—shaped by the dust, the floods and the river’s steady course.
When asked why he felt the urge to make this a documentary and now a multimedia presentation—an immersive experience blending storytelling with live music, enhanced by audiovisual and artistic production—Moitra says, “During 100 Days in the Himalayas, I realised that while travelling solo was fulfilling for me, by not filming it, I was denying others from being a part of my journey. There are many who cannot experience this. Those stuck in demanding schedules. I felt like I was robbing them of a chance to see and experience this.”
As we speak, it is clear: this post-Covid world feels like a dream Moitra has not fully woken from. There is still something about it that doesn’t make sense, that hangs in the air, unresolved. His voice briefly drifts away, as we speak of the upcoming performance as if the stage is already in front of him, the lights and the sound, the pull of the river and the emotional current that comes with it. He has been on this stage several times before, sharing a slice of his sojourns in nature with the audience at the NCPA. This time though he is uncertain, he says, about how he will stand there, under the lights, without the grief breaking his voice. How will he move through it all? The loss is near, still close enough to touch. In many ways, Songs of the River Ganga is about music and memory. It is a testament to what holds us together when we are falling apart. “I am an adventurist. I believe there’s a deep relationship between physical endurance and creativity, so this journey of mine is ongoing,” he says, slowly, the river, the grief and the music swirling together into something too big for words.
This article was originally published in the January 2025 issue of ON Stage.