My earliest memories of Narmada are related to the occasional travels our family had from Bhopal, where we lived, to Pachmarhi, the scenic hill-station in the Satpuras, about 200 km away.
For that we had to cross Narmada between Budhni and Hoshangabad (now Narmadapuram). It was our father’s custom to halt the vehicle on the bridge, take out a coin, have everyone touch it, and then make one of us siblings offer it to Narmada. This ritual followed over the years engraved in our minds that this river is not just another river but a very special and sacred one. I think the seeds of kinship with Narmada in our hearts started then onwards.
When I enrolled in am engineering college I had to take a train that crossed Narmada at the same place. On return journeys, that were quite long – my college was in Kharagpur – crossing Narmada meant the home territory had come.
Destiny later took me to Bengal and the work I started there did not occasion me to visit the Narmada region, for more than a decade. In 2015, when my work was still limited to Bengal only, I travelled for a few days in some parts of Madhya Pradesh with a friend. There had been a latent wish within me to also start some work in Madhya Pradesh, the region where I had spent my boyhood but I did not have any map of how and where it could be rolled out. During that visit we happened to cross Narmada at one place, and at that very instant I exclaimed, “Of course, we should start something on the bank of Narmada!” It took one or two more visits before we purchased a small village cottage right on the Narmada bank near Nemawar, the mid-point of Narmada, in Dewas district. In course of years we developed our Seva Kutir project across tribal pockets in several districts of the state and also a residential school complex just a few miles from Nemawar. That cottage, has served as my primary dwelling for long periods in last few years, during the time our work in Madhya Pradesh grew at a rapid rate.
It is not this place to reflect on what impact this renewed, and decidedly more close, association with Narmada has had on me. But the present writing is certainly an outcome of that. In course of last few years, I have had the occasion to travel through all districts on the Narmada trajectory – much more in Madhya Pradesh, but also a little in Gujarat.
Our cottage on the bank of Narmada is on the Narmada-Parikrama route and thousands of devoted Parikramavasis (those who perform the circumambulation of Narmada, walking a distance of more than 3000 km) walk through it. While in early life, I hardly knew anything about Narmada Parikrama – it is quite a shame that even spending years in Bhopal I did not know anything of it – but here I could see people ranging from youngsters to those in evening of their lives devotedly and steadfastly performing this arduous Tapasya. Living in this region I also came to know of a number of special occasions and festive days that are observed in the Narmadakhand – the region around the bank right from the origin at Amarkantak till the Gulf of Cambay in Gujarat.
I also had the good fortune to come to know and several persons – monks and ascetics, as well as common persons carrying on their regular lives in the world, who had undergone the Parikrama and they invariably felt it as one of the greatest and most transformative experience of their lives.
In my knowledge about Narmadakhand I have been greatly benefited by my interactions with Pujya Sri Shastriji Maharaj of Nemawar, a venerable scholar-saint, who has always been generous with his time in speaking to me about Narmada. He also gave me several rare texts and Parikrama-memoirs to read, which I would have never come to even know about, and thus put me on the trail of several interesting learnings and new cues to explore. My gratitude to him is immense.
This book is a humble attempt to give a sketch of the Narmada region, surveying some of its geographical, social, cultural and historical aspects. Any attempt to narrate the story of Narmada and its region to any degree nearing comprehensiveness is impossible. Perhaps taking out a few drops from this ocean of immeasurable sublimity and share it others is the modest hope of the author of this endeavour. In any case, writing this itself has been a rewarding experience for me.
This work is dedicated to my father, Shri Nanda Ballabh Lohani, who first introduced the glorious Narmada into our lives and has been the architect of this unsnappable bonding we have had with Narmada.