The Journey to Bheda Ghat — A Human Chronicle – Preparation for Tara and Bopa Circumambulate Narmada. A Narmada Parikrama.

1. Amarkantak: The Beginning, and the Bargain

They began from Amarkantak, where the Narmada emerges as a shy spring from under stone steps. Tara filled her palms with that first trickle and laughed:

“If the river begins in a courtyard, perhaps we too can begin again.”

They were newly bound, not yet married in the eyes of society — Bopa Rai, the ex-soldier turned tutor; Tara, who had left behind a secure teaching job in Rewa to follow him. They made a small pact before the temple of Narmada Mai:

“We will walk as equals, sleep where the river sleeps, and never turn our back on her flow.”

They carried little — a blanket, a brass lota, and a battered notebook in which Bopa drew equations beside her sketches of birds.

At night, Tara would ask him to explain the symbols. He would turn the symbols into metaphors.
“See, this delta sign — it means change. All we are doing is walking through change.”

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2. The Forest Roads of Dindori

By the time they reached Dindori, their feet were raw. They walked through forests of teak where monkeys hurled tamarind shells at them. The forest was loud — insects, unseen birds, and at dusk the deep cough of a leopard.

One night they shared a shelter with an old sadhu who said the forest itself was a prayer. He looked at their joined hands and said,

“If you walk long enough, even the river will recognize you.”

Tara began to crave salt and tamarind, and Bopa started making light jokes about “two hungry mouths.”
They quarrelled too — about money, about his endless lectures to strangers. Once she shouted, “You want to teach the whole world, but you cannot buy me tea!” He took it silently, then found her later sitting by a stream, weeping.
He cupped his hands, filled them with water, and offered it like penance.

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3. Mandla: Between River and Bazaar

When they reached Mandla, civilization returned — the cries of vegetable vendors, temple bells, the smell of frying poha. They rented a back room near the ghat. Tara began stitching blouses for women in the bazaar, while Bopa took evening tuition for schoolboys.

They lived hand-to-mouth but laughed easily.
Every evening they sat by the river and watched the children dive from the old bridge. Tara would place her hand on her belly; it had begun to curve gently.

One stormy night, lightning struck the temple flag. The noise scared her, and she clutched him hard. He said,

“Don’t worry. Even light must strike ground to return to sky.”

That was the night she first told him she was with child.

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4. The Road to Jabalpur: Hunger, Hope, and Silence

The road to Jabalpur was long and unkind. They joined a bullock cart convoy, slept in grain warehouses, and once went hungry for two days when the rains washed out the road.

Tara’s feet swelled; she refused to let him carry her bag.
They crossed villages where people gossiped about the woman walking with a man but without mangalsutra.
One night by a rest house near Tilwara, she cried quietly — not out of shame, but exhaustion.
He built a small fire, warmed milk, and whispered,

“Tara, I know I have no roof to offer, but the sky is honest, isn’t it?”

She laughed through her tears,

“It leaks, though.”

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5. Bheda Ghat: Stone, Water, and Birth

When they reached Bheda Ghat, the sound reached them first — a deep roar like wind through a thousand drums. The Dhuandhar Falls were at full monsoon. They stood awed, drenched in mist.

They rented a low stone room near the bazaar. The owner, a marble-carver named Shambhu, let them pay in labour — Bopa ferried tourists on his mules, Tara helped Shambhu’s wife with cooking.

At night, when tourists had gone and the lights of Jabalpur shimmered far off, they would walk to the Chausath Yogini Temple. Tara, now heavy with twins, would rest her palm on one of the stone goddesses. “She feels warm,” she’d say.

Bopa taught algebra to the local children by drawing triangles on the sand. His favourite demonstration was to toss a pebble into the Narmada and say,

“See this? This is the parabola of faith.”

When her pains began one night in August, the monsoon was fierce. The river rose. Shambhu’s wife came running, midwife and mother both.
As lightning flashed, Tara delivered twins — a boy and a girl — on a reed mat, her hair wet, her voice hoarse from screaming the river’s name.

Bopa, trembling, cut the cord with his own knife. Outside, the Narmada thundered like applause.

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6. The Year of Stillness

They stayed a year at Bheda Ghat.
He took tourists along the marble gorge, naming stones after constellations. She sang to the babies under the echoing cliffs.

They earned little, but the marble men and boatmen treated them as family.
At dusk, they would light a small lamp and place it on the water. The twin flames drifted between the white cliffs, disappearing into the mist.

Tara once said softly,

“We began walking around a river. But it feels as if the river has walked through us.”

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Year Two: Among the Marble Carvers

Bheda Ghat, with its white cliffs and roaring falls, was not merely a pause in their pilgrimage — it became their village, their university, their nursery.

1. The Craftsmen and the River

The marble carvers of Bheda Ghat were a curious lot — men who knew the temperament of each stone as if it were a child.
Each morning, the air filled with the rhythmic tock-tock-tock of chisels and the fine dust of white marble that settled on everyone’s skin, making them look like minor gods.

Bopa Rai learned the art quickly — not the carving, but the mathematics of it. He showed Shambhu the master carver how to calculate volume loss from each block, how to angle the chisel to minimize fracture. “Marble,” he said, “obeys geometry, but listens to patience.”

Tara meanwhile became the heart of the carvers’ wives. She taught them songs and herbs for childbirth, and helped their children learn to read. Her twins, Bopa and Bopi, grew strong — the boy quiet, the girl restless, both with the same grey eyes as the Narmada at dawn.

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2. Echoes in the Gorge

Every evening they would go to the river. The marble cliffs reflected their voices in long echoes, and Tara would amuse the children by shouting their names — “Bopa! Bopi!” — and hearing them return.

Sometimes she whispered, “You see, the river remembers.”

Bopa Rai wrote those words in his notebook, alongside sketches of parabolas and river curves. He had begun dreaming of writing a small book: “Hydraulics of the Heart.”

But in the nights after the rains, when the river ran swollen and black, he would sit alone and watch the moonlight strike the marble. He often wondered whether their wandering had ended or merely paused.

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3. The Decision

One morning, an ascetic came riding a bullock cart, carrying a trident and a weathered conch. He stopped at their door and asked for water. Seeing the twins, he smiled and said,

“They belong to the river, not to the rock.”

After he left, Tara said quietly,

“Maybe it is time.”

They sold their few possessions — the mules, the brass pot, the extra blanket — and the carvers gave them gifts: a marble Shiva-linga, a small pestle, and an idol of Narmada carved with the twins’ names beneath.

Their friends wept; Bopa Rai promised to return. And on a crisp winter morning, with the river in retreat and mist rising from the gorge, the family began their southwestern march, following the Narmada again toward the sea.

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Year Three: Downstream to the Sea

1. Tilwara to Hoshangabad — “The Wide River”

As they left Jabalpur district, the Narmada spread wide, her temperament calmer. They reached Tilwara, where Gandhi’s ashes had been immersed, and Bopa Rai told the twins about dust returning to water, and water to sky.

At Hoshangabad, they camped on a sandbank for a fortnight. Tara began collecting pebbles of different colours for the children. She told them stories — how the grey stones were from the time when gods fought in the sky, and the black ones were tears of mountains.

At night they sang together. Villagers came to listen — the songs of a woman from the north and a man who spoke like a teacher but sang like a student.

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2. Omkareshwar — “The Island of Faith”

By the middle of the year they reached Omkareshwar, the island-shaped like the sacred Om. Pilgrims thronged the ghats; the twins were wide-eyed at the crush of people, conches, and marigolds.

They climbed the 200 steps to the Omkareshwar Jyotirlinga, Tara carrying the girl, Bopa carrying the boy.
Before the Shiva-linga, they placed the marble idol of Narmada from Bheda Ghat.

Bopa Rai whispered,

“The stone met its source.”

They stayed a month — helping priests, feeding monkeys, learning the daily rhythm of chant and silence. When they left, Tara said she had dreamt of a giant wheel turning, pulling them westward.

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3. Maheshwar and the Queen’s River

Further downstream they came to Maheshwar, where the fort of Ahilyabai Holkar rises over the ghats. Tara admired the queen’s story — a widow who ruled with grace and built temples along the Narmada.

They lived by the ghats, teaching children in the temple courtyards.
Every evening, Tara would stand where the queen once prayed, the twins beside her, and say,

“Even the mighty must return to the river.”

In Maheshwar, Bopa Rai began sketching again — not equations this time, but flow lines, how eddies formed behind rocks, how driftwood spun before escaping. He called them “lessons of detour.”

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4. The Final Leg: Barwani to the Estuary

As they moved past Barwani, the air turned saltier, and the river’s colour changed from silver to brown. Tamarind trees gave way to palms, and the cries of gulls replaced parrots.

They were no longer pilgrims; they were a family with river-stained feet. The twins walked most of the day now, gathering shells, asking endless questions.

Tara often fell silent — her strength was waning, her heart already half in the sea.

When they reached the Bharuch estuary, where the Narmada merges into the Arabian Sea, the river widened beyond imagination. They stood on the sand where fresh water met the tide.

Bopa Rai lifted both children into his arms.

“This is the end of the river,” he said softly.
Tara smiled faintly,
“No — this is where she begins again.”

They offered the last of their lamp-oil into the water, the flame trembling once before the sea took it whole.

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Epilogue: The Circle Completed

The Parikrama was complete — three years and a thousand lives later. They did not walk back; the   had walked through them.

Bopa Rai took up teaching again near Bharuch for a while, Tara tended to the children, and every evening they would walk to the estuary. The twins would ask,

“Is this still Narmada?”
And he would answer,
“Yes — even the sea remembers her name.”

Tara’s Compilation — The Hymn of the River

When the third year ended and the sea lay before them like a mirror of eternity, Tara began to write.
She gathered her worn notebook, tied with the thread of her old dupatta, and said softly to Bopa Rai:

“I will write not what happened, but what should never be forgotten.”

Each page she filled not with events but with stillnesses — the spaces between footsteps,
the hush between waves, the scent of milk warming for the twins, the hush that follows a quarrel. 

She titled it simply:
“श्री नर्मदाष्टकम् — For Meditation and Remembrance.”

At its end she copied, in her fine hand, the verses she had learned from an old ascetic by the gorge — the Śrī Narmadāṣṭakam — her final act of gratitude to the river that had been mother, midwife, and map.

Beneath the Sanskrit she wrote her own reflection in English, so that her children might one day read both languages — of devotion and of understanding.

From Tara’s Notebook:
“The river gave me not answers but rhythm. She asked me to walk when I was tired, to rest when I was proud. She took my fear and returned it as children. I bow to her lotus feet — Narmada, the mother of movement, who keeps even silence in flow.”

Śrī Narmadāṣṭakam (The Hymn of Tara’s Meditation)

संस्कृत / Devanāgarī	English Translation
त्वदीय पाद पंकजं नमामि देवी नर्मदे। नमामि देवी नर्मदे, नमामि देवी नर्मदे॥	I bow to thy lotus feet, O Goddess Narmada. O divine river, I salute thee again and again.
सबिन्दु सिन्धु सुस्खल तरंग भंग रंजितम्। द्विषत्सु पाप जातजात कारि वारि संयुतम्॥ कृतान्तदूत कालभूत भीतिहारि वर्मदे। त्वदीय पाद पंकजं नमामि देवी नर्मदे॥	O river radiant with wave and foam, Your waters wash away the stains of sin. Even the messengers of Death flee your current. At your lotus feet I bow, O Goddess Narmada.
त्वदम्बु लीन दीन मीन दिव्य सम्प्रदायकम्। कलौ मलौघ भारहारि सर्वतीर्थ नायकम्॥ सुमस्त्य कच्छ नक्रचक्र चक्रवाक शर्मदे। त्वदीय पाद पंकजं नमामि देवी नर्मदे॥	You cradle the small fish and the poor alike; in this dark age you lighten the burden of sin. You are chief among holy rivers, giver of serenity. At thy feet I bow, O Goddess Narmada.
महागभीर नीर पुर पापधुत भूतलम्। ध्वनत्समस्त पातकारि दरितापदाचलम्॥ जगल्ल्ये महाभये मृकुण्डूसूनु हर्म्यदे। त्वदीय पाद पंकजं नमामि देवी नर्मदे॥	Your depths cleanse the earth itself of evil; your roar splits the mountains of fear. When the world trembles in dread, you restore its courage and peace.
गतं तदैव में भयं त्वदम्बु वीक्षितं यदा। मृकुण्डूसूनु शौनकासुरारी सेवी सर्वदा॥ पुनर्भवाब्धि जन्मजं भवाब्धिदुःखवर्मदे। त्वदीय पाद पंकजं नमामि देवी नर्मदे॥	The moment I beheld your stream, my fear was gone. O beloved of Shiva, worshipped by sages and saints, you free us from rebirth and worldly sorrow. To your lotus feet I bow, O Goddess Narmada.
अहोमृतं श्रवणश्रुतं महेषकेश जातटे। किरात सूत वाडवेषु पण्डिते शठे नटे॥ दुरन्त पाप ताप हारि सर्वजंतु शर्मदे। त्वदीय पाद पंकजं नमामि देवी नर्मदे॥	Your name is nectar to the ear; your touch redeems all. Kings and hunters, sages and fools — all find peace in you. You dissolve the heat of sin, the chill of despair. I bow at your lotus feet, O Narmada.
इदं तु नर्मदाष्टकं त्रिकालं ये पठन्ति वै। न यान्ति दुर्गतिं कदाचित्, लभन्ते परमं पदम्॥ सुलभ्य देव दुर्लभं महेशधाम गौरवम्। त्वदीय पाद पंकजं नमामि देवी नर्मदे॥	Whoever recites this hymn three times a day shall never fall into misery. They attain the radiant abode of Maheshwara — where rebirth ends and peace begins.

🌕 Narmada Jayanti — Worship & Lamp Offering (Deepdān Vidhi)

Date: Celebrated each year on Magha Shukla Saptami (1 February 2025).
Significance: Commemorates the divine appearance (Avirbhav) of River Narmada — daughter of Shiva and the living goddess of purification.

Worship (Pūjan Vidhi):
• Rise before sunrise and bathe, chanting “Narmade Har”.
• Offer flowers, fruits, and sandal paste before the river or an image.
• Chant Śrī Narmadāṣṭakam or repeat “ॐ नमः नर्मदायै नमः।”
• Perform Deepdān — float oil lamps on the river or water bowl, symbolizing surrender.
• Offer prayers for forgiveness, health, and renewal.

“Whoever lights a lamp for Narmada on this night,
their wish flows as surely as her current — through darkness, toward the sea.”

Tara’s Closing Entry:
When the children sleep, I light two lamps — one for memory, one for forgetting. Both drift on the tide and return as light. Whoever reads these verses, let them not think of rivers or gods, but of movement itself — the way everything finds its level when the heart is still.

Compiled, translated, and edited by Col. Narinder Jarial (Retd.)