In 1986 an Englishman called Dennison Berwick walked the length of the Ganges and wrote about his experience in his book, A Walk Along the Ganges. Berwick critiqued the Indian culture and environment throughout the book, but towards the end described how he too succumbed to the lure of the holy river, and notwithstanding the floating dead and pollution, took a dip in its waters.
Exactly 30 years later, our very own environmentalist, activist, humanist, actress, producer and model, Dia Mirza, will traverse all 1,550 miles of the Ganges, from Gangotri to Calcutta, for the television show Ganga: The Soul Of India - to be aired from today.
For those not in the know, the former Miss India Asia Pacific (2000) was chosen not so much for her natural good looks, as for her impassioned advocacy for the natural environment.
Her social media posts are testimony. "Amazing ?#?Fact! TIGER FORESTS FEED RIVERS. But with 'progress' forest cover is shrinking in India," reads her Facebook post on Earth Day (April 22). "You cannot expect economic security, if you don't have forests," she thunders. "If you don't have forests, you will not have rivers; and if you don't have rivers, you will not have water; if you do not have water, you will not have health; and if you continue to pollute the oceans and the atmosphere, we are not going to be a healthy enough nation."
Born to a German father and a Bengali mother, Mirza, who took her stepfather's surname, was 21 when she went to Gujarat as part of the Narmada Bachao Andolan and was forcibly evacuated from the protest site.
Mirza stresses that what defines her is the sense of "feeling connected" to people and causes. And, clearly, she is not afraid of speaking her mind when it comes to causes close to her heart. When Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament Meenakshi Lekhi said last year that Mother Teresa helped the poor to convert them to Christianity, Mirza had lashed back.
"I find it very saddening that people would attribute Mother Teresa's incredible humanitarian work to an objective - to convert people," she says, recalling the incident. "What was she converting them into? She was giving them dignity. And if that conversion gave them dignity, what is so wrong with that?"
Mirza has a problem with this reductive, "compartmentalise and control" approach. She believes every voice has its place in society.
"I may not agree with your idea of many things, but that shouldn't make me violent towards you. I think we are very easily riled as a country right now. There is so much anger. I feel people's attitude and manner of communication, right from the media to politics, is very aggressive."
Her involvements with various charitable projects and campaigns - Save the Tiger, cancer patients, HIV awareness, prevention of female foeticide, animal and children's rights, Spastics Society of India - mirror her compassion.
And yet who would have thought that the Miss India second runner-up with a not-so-successful acting stint in Bollywood had so much in her? Mirza obviously did. She didn't let her box-office setbacks get to her, instead she floated a production house, Born Free Entertainment, with Sahil Sangha, whom she married in 2014.
"Born Free was born of the intention to tell compelling stories, to take my lessons, learnt from my journey in films, and turn them into socially relevant narratives," says Mirza, her eyes dancing with excitement.
The films, she holds, highlight "progressive" ideas. She cites the characters in her 2011 film Love Breakups Zindagi, directed by Sangha. "A twice-divorced man is pursuing a woman who is an Urdu professor who has never been interested in marriage. There are lots of subtle, progressive ideas I think the film encouraged and explored without forcing an idea onto anybody," she says.
"Much of the commentary we initiate as filmmakers does not have to be stark or dark or dramatic," she elaborates. "I think that something as simple as choosing a character's lines wisely can make a big difference to the narrative."
Another Born Free project close to her heart is the Vidya Balan-starrer Bobby Jasoos. "We didn't go to town tom-tomming the fact that it was a woman's empowerment story. But we were actually celebrating a woman who belonged to a minority community and lived in a small mohallah in the old city of Hyderabad, and had the audacity to aim to be the number one private detective of her times."
The film is Mirza's tribute to the city she grew up in. "I don't understand why Hindi films mean only Punjabi culture. We need to celebrate the beauty and diversity of India through our films," she says.
From Hyderabad back to Mumbai. Mirza's latest film project is Salaam Mumbai!, an Iranian film. Mirza plays the lead role in it. "It is essentially a romantic drama and true to Iranian style and narrative, it is extremely straightforward and simplistic in its approach. The Iranian filmmakers are very real and their films are nuanced. The rhythm of their cinema is very different from the rhythm of our cinema. Although, I must admit that in the recent past, even within India we are discovering a more real rhythm."
So we ask the obvious question. Would she rather be in front of the camera or behind it?
"I love being in front of the camera. I had forgotten how much I love it until I started working in this film. But if you ask me, the satisfaction of being in a place where you can translate the written word into tangible reality gives you a different high. In front of the camera you are just a character, but when you are behind it, you are the initiator, the facilitator and much more, and that is challenging."
You go, girl!
