'Searching for Saraswati' looks for logic behind finding mythical river: director

"Searching for Saraswati" director Amit Madhesiya says his documentary is a metaphor for the times we live in, where the government can spend Rs 50 crore in finding a mythical river at a time when existing ones are dying.

Successive governments, be it Congress or BJP, have been trying to find Saraswati, which is believed to have disappeared thousands of years ago, Madhesiya said, adding that he and his co-director Shirley Abraham were tracking the story for a while.

Their curiosity was piqued in 2015 when they read that the river was found in Mugalwali village of Haryana's Yamunanagar district.

Madhesiya said they had questions like "How do you find a river?" and "Why is a government trying to find a river that has been lost for some 5,000-8,000 years?"
"Our earth is 4.6 billion years old. Rivers come and go and maybe that river was lost. And now to take water from the ground and say that this river has been found, it is problematic because you are conflating myth with the fact. If you do that, then we are not creating an inquisitive society."