Blooded Waters, Dirty Hands: An Elegy for Puṇyodaka
Blooded Waters, Dirty Hands: An Elegy for Puṇyodaka Posted on 1st February, 2026 (GMT 07:18 hrs) Authored by Ecotopians of Alternity (EOA)⤡ under the Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA) Platform ABSTRACT This text is an elegy for puṇyodaka—not as a lost ritual substance, but as a shattered moral condition. Moving across Kalidasa’s Meghadūta, the Vana Parva’s Yaksha-prashna, biblical plague, Macbeth’s indelible blood, and Sartre’s Dirty Hands, it traces how water—river, sea, confluence—has been converted into spectacle, alibi, and instrument of power. Empirical poisonings (heavy metals, fecal coliforms, ecological collapse) coexist with choreographed immersions, artificial ghats, and submarine devotions, revealing a regime of simulation where sanctity is performed while rivers rot and silences are enforced. The work argues that contemporary governmentality no longer seeks purity but stages it, laundering violence through ritual, nationalism, and necessity. Against...