Every winter, a small miracle takes place across the Indian sky. High above the snow peaks of the Himalayas, at altitudes where even planes struggle to breathe, flocks of bar-headed geese glide southward from the frozen lakes of Central Asia. They descend into the wetlands of India (the Ganga plains) honking softly as they rest on the waters that have awaited them since Vedic times. This is the hamsa of Indian imagination, the bird of Saraswati, the emblem of wisdom, purity, and transcendence.

The bar-headed goose (hansa) is a key cultural symbol of India, along with other waterfowl such as the sarus crane (krauncha), ruddy shelduck (chakravaka) and crane (baga, bagula). This list excludes the swan (raj-hansa), which is European, not Indian. But somewhere in the last two centuries, the Indian goose was eclipsed.

In colonial translations, it was transformed into a European swan, a bird that never flew over the Himalayas, never nested in Ladakh, never knew our monsoons. The goose carved in stone on temple walls was ignored and everyone paid attention to swans appearing next to Shakuntala, transforming her into the Greek Leda.

The hansa is........

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