JAYA GANGA

A remarkable journey—part pilgrimage, part romantic odyssey—down India’s mightiest river, the Ganga. Nishant, a young Indian writer living in Paris, is haunted by the memory of an enigmatic Parisienne who claims to be two persons—Jaya and Nadja. He decides to journey down the Ganges, from its source in the Himalayas to where it meets the sea, with a desire to write about this voyage and his memories of Jaya. On the banks of the Ganga, he meets Zehra, an irresistible dancing girl in the tradition of the great tawaiffs, who performs in a nearby brothel. Zehra resurrects the memory of Jaya. With Jaya and Zehra inhabiting his mind, Nishant undertakes an entrancing journey down the Ganga replete with unexpected encounters with sadhus, boatmen, engineers, vernacular journalists, pimps, administrators, Bollywood stars like Amitabh Bachchan, and the omnipresent pandas. When Jaya Ganga was first published in French, it created more than a stir in literary circles. It was hailed as a unique travelogue-novel which brought the author’s inner and outer worlds effortlessly together. Jaya Ganga was adapted in cinema in 1995. A cult film today, Jaya Ganga, written and directed by Vijay Singh, played for a record 49 weeks in the UK and France after being screened in 40 other countries.