Requiem for a River
“When I was a child,” the old man began in Kannada and
then halted, taking in a deep breath. I
sat patiently, for I’d been told that he had a bad asthma. His voice, as he spoke, was hoarse and low
and interrupted by laboured, heavy breathing.
“The river, when I was a child,” he continued slowly,
“was not the same river it is now. My
family lived on the opposite bank about two kilometres upstream, and we came to school
on this side of the river in a boat (called ‘vanji’). I loved the boat journey! Every day all of us children would clamber onto
it, alongwith the postman, who lived near our home. The boatman was harsh in tone and strict, but
a good responsible person. We chatted on
the boat and made fun of each other and of people on both sides as they went
about their daily chores, but there weren’t many people then….” he paused to
clear his throat, his voice trailing as the eyes, which were light and
expressive, looked away and into the distance.
“….and in the monsoons?” I asked softly.
“Oh, the monsoons!
The water was swift and the current was dangerous. Often, the boatman would not turn up, so we
missed school. We sat inside the house
all day waiting for the rain to stop, but, of course, it wouldn’t. Everything around us would be damp for days
and the women would struggle to dry our clothes in time. But there was water in the river even in the
harshest of summers then.
“You remember the summers well?”
“Of course! All
of us boys would be in the water all day, when we did not have school. We knew the right spots where the water came
up to our chests and we would play in it as long as the sun was in the sky. I learnt to swim and dive in the river and we
would all compete with, and outdo, each other.
And, do you know something
else? We drank the water from the river
too, for it was that clean. I never fell
sick when I was young, no diarrohea or stomach illness from drinking river
water.”
He paused and looked at the image on display in my
camera. “And, now,” the old man
continued, shaking his head and staring at the image, “it is all gone. History.”
The eyes had narrowed and he was pursing his lips, for the image spoke a
thousand-word requiem for the Lakshmana Teertha.
Another image in front of us spoke of a
river that, even after a
decent rain in 2018, had been reduced to a trickle
despite there being no dam upstream. And,
just as there was no water, there was no sand as well, only a steep bank. For the sand has long been gouged out from
the river to meet rapidly growing construction needs on a large commercial
scale, unsustainably extracted and clandestinely transported for illicit
profit. In Coorg, the sand of the Lakshmana Teertha was considered to be of superior quality, a
perception that sounded the death knell of the ecosystem. Erratic rainfall over the last decade has
resulted in increased reliance on the river for irrigation: planters dip their
pipes in to the shallow water and their pumps, which dot the
sand-mined banks of the river from November to May, lift hundreds of millions of
litres out each year.
He shook his head as he looked at another image, a picture of the bottle, a grim
reminder of the reason for the demise of the river. Isn’t it strange that humans have a seemingly
infinite capacity to destroy something that sustains them?
Stretches of this river have even changed course, due to the collapse of
the river bank, as a result of sand mining and the water-retention capacity of
the river has dwindled to a tiny fraction of the original, dropping the water
table in the surrounding region. Open
wells, as a consequence, have dried up, while borewells are dug every
year.
In summary, the river has thrown in the
towel.
“You know, Sir, this is our holy river in Coorg,
alongwith the Cauvery. Teertha, as you
know, means holy water. Is this its
fate? It’s water is filthy, and the
Keere Hole, its tributary, brings all
the waste of Gonikoppa right down to these stretches. In summer, the smell along the river is unbearable. Some trees remain but the sand, the water and
the fish are now all gone. What remains is a drain.”
I remained silent for a moment, but he did not
continue.
“Did you see otters in the river then?” I asked.
“Many of them, Sir, every day!” he replied. We would see them at dawn and dusk and there
have been times when they have swum so close to us that we could have, for a
fraction of a second, actually touched them.
The river was teeming with fish then and the otters and we had enough
food. You just had to use a cloth to
catch fish, enough for a meal with rice. And, today, in this river, there are
no fish to speak of. No fish.” The anguish
was deep within and genuine.
He shook his head as he looked at another image, a picture of the bottle, a grim
reminder of the reason for the demise of the river. Isn’t it strange that humans have a seemingly
infinite capacity to destroy something that sustains them?
Our conversation moved on from the river to his coffee
crop, but he was distracted and seemed distraught.
“Are there otters in the river, Sir,?” he asked me, “I
have heard that a few are left……”
“Yes, a few, but not here anymore. The otter depends on fish and the fish depend
on sand and water.”
“So do we.” he replied sadly.
Nostalgia is an odd emotion, isn’t it? For it induces a sort of happy sadness in
each of us, a comforting memory, even for the listener. And I wonder if this old man in front of me,
this man with the Wheeze and Regret, is like the river itself, soulmates in a
journey that has to end with debilitation and demise. Indeed, as I see his wandering eyes, they
remind me of the Lakshmana Teertha as it meanders now in search of solace and
support, nostalgic about what it used to be and crippled by its
reputation.
The old man, perhaps, is the river itself.