ashes to ashes, water to water, life to life.
All Riverine civilisations worship water as the mother and reservoir of life on this planet. Earth or the soil is the other reservoir of life, when later life evolved on land. No wonder, when a human life ceases to exist, some civilisational ritual like the Vedic bestows respect to the leaving soul by merging ashes of mortal remains into the flowing river. We often wonder how rituals of #durgapuja in Bengal draws its cultural lineage from the human practices of a time period which has no recorded but only inferred history. #MahaDashami, the last day of festive fervor and floating dreams of madness and desire, and artists shall put pale shades of color on their artworks. Here our eternal mother, Ma Durga, who drew life from river-water and river-bed shall surrender into the river, while the drums would beat to a crescendo and the children of God chant and cry 'Asche Bochor Abar Hobe' ( Shall celebrate again in the coming year). That is the cycle of life - ashes to ash