The camera reached Sagar Island one overcast August afternoon, 2023: a dark road across flat green land, a brimming canal, paddies standing in water to the horizon, a bicycle under plastic. Rain here is a season.

What it did not show: the sea. Coverage ends at the village lanes. The one thing this island exists for has no photograph.

This is where the Ganga ends. The river that drowned Varanasi's ghats in August ends here at the Bay of Bengal. The island is its last word.

Legend: King Sagar's 60,000 sons, burned by a sage's wrath, given no rites, could not leave. Bhagiratha prayed the Ganga down; Shiva caught her in his hair and let one drop fall, and the river crossed India and gave the ash its rites here.

The old temple went under; the new one, from 1974, stands 450 metres from the bay. A lighthouse stands a hundred metres out, where the shore used to be. Every January, a crore of pilgrims walk here and bathe where the river gives up.

02:00. Dark island, rain everywhere. Beyond the last mapped lane the river keeps arriving at the sea, and the sea keeps taking the island back. Neither needs a photograph.

The camera could not find the water. The water does not care.