Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 1, Number 1. May 2018. ISSN: 2581-7094
Riparian
Ruminations of a Lay Poet Cum Citizen
“I asked for rivers and hills from the gods;
They heard me at last, I will live in contentment
And I shall never desire to go beyond that river,
Nor shall I cross that mountain. No, never.”
– Sei Ariette I: Malinconia,
Ninfa Gentile by Vincenzo Bellini
(Taken from
the Fisher of Perch, Tanya Mendonsa)
Bowing to our rich network of rivers Ganga, Yamuna,
Sindhu, Brahmaputra, Teesta, Narmada, Tapati, Sabarmati, Mahanadi, Vamsadhara,
Nagavali, Godavari, Krishna, Tungabhadra, Penna, Kavery, Tamraparni, Vaigai…,
lakes and every water body…, I set out…
India is fortunate in having a good network of rivers,
and we will be more fortunate if we realise their vital importance to our lives
and make everything possible to conserve them and don’t unduly curb their
natural freedom. Otherwise we will come to such a pass where we have to regret:
‘Water, water everywhere… but no drop to drink.’
A river is a unique representative of all the five
elements. While its banks, bed, alluvium and sand are the terrestrial aspect;
its meandering and gurgling waters are the aqua proper. Its waters warmed up by
the sun are the fire and light; whereas its swirls strummed by the blowing
breezes represent the ethereal.
Water is the lifeline of the very human existence and survival
as also of their agriculture and industries, and nature’s forests and fauna.
A river can be gentle and vigorous, it can be cool or
warm, it can be violent too if we dare to tinker with it – even as it is the sap
of our lives.
While man dams the river and builds reservoirs of it,
the watery mom is herself a reservoir of teeming aquatic life.
The sun attracted by the river’s sinewy grace, steadily
woos her with his warm smiles, and while setting in the west, he passes on the
mantle to his celestial friends – the moon and the stars – to be his nightly
ambassadors.
There is a philosophical similarity between a human
and a river. Born in the small womb of his mother, and nourished by her
vitalising milk, the human grows up to lead a life of long innings – before finally
merging into the infinite divinity. Likewise, born in a small crevice of a
mountain, a river is nurtured by the maternal rocky nutrients, and grows up and
traverses across a vast stretch of land – before finally losing itself into the
enormously vaster ocean, but only after satisfying our tongues and skins, and
our hearts and souls too.
In India, a country where every aspect of nature is
held sacred, water is synonymous with the Ganga, and Ganga is synonymous with
water pure and clean. But do we now see that purity and cleanliness? Why is
there so much of filth and stench? Isn’t it because of man’s superstitious
inertia and the governmental venality? Is it not because of man who not only
distorts the course of the rivers, but also defiles their water, deluding
himself that they can absorb any amount of shit and skank, and yet remain
unpolluted. He has systematically and ruthlessly killed the Ganga whose waters
had been a legend for a long time. The ships from India to England used to carry
only Ganga water for their crew and passengers, since they had a very long
expiry date. The maharajas of Rajasthan when they had to go abroad, used to
carry Ganga water stored in huge silver vessels for their drinking. Modern
scientific tests have proved that the Ganga water contains bacteriophages which
eat up the putrefying bacteria – the reason for its perennial purity. There is a limit even to the purifying capacity of Ganga; she is no longer able to stand
and digest the filth from an exponentially multiplied population. And a large
number of industries lined up on either side are choking the river by draining
their effluents into it. Man with his greed has undone her mightiness, purity
and divinity.
Ganga is only an example because it is the most
important river of India serving a huge populace along its course from the
Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal in West Bengal. Uninterrupted supply of water,
especially pure drinking water, is getting so scarce that inter-regional and
inter-state water disputes are brewing.
When the monsoons, the feeder of the Indian rivers, go
on a strike, we blame or supplicate the pluvial deities. And then when there is
a sudden downpour as if with a vengeance, the fluvial ferocity knows no bounds,
and we fault the capriciousness of the rain-gods and the fury of the river
goddesses. No matter how scientifically or technologically man may have advanced,
he can never aspire to control the entire forces of nature to be at his beck
and call, for he is only a tiny speck in the limitless cosmos. The mysteries of
nature, however much we explore, elude us ever to fly beyond our horizons. We
should only know how to adapt ourselves to the forces of nature, as
congenially as we can, instead of trying to realise the impossible and
counter-productive pipedream of controlling nature wholesale.
If this wisdom is taken seriously, we can limit the
effects of disasters. Otherwise, we have to sing a threnodic chorus with “A flood of tears” (see Poetry section).
In
order to avert or at least minimise the damage, it’s high time that we ceased to convert rivers and other water bodies into
drains or sewers of night soil. Let’s stop treating the water bodies as dumping
pits of garbage and chemical and plastic wastes. Let’s desist from choking the
life-giving waterways. With the realisation finally dawning on us now, we are
feeling repentant, but none should think that others would do it for him. It is
welcome that the Supreme Court is also serious about the Ganga.
If only all the people across political parties, regions
and states, religions and castes come together, gird up their loins and work
shoulder to shoulder with the NGOs and the government with a clear conscience
to protect the rivers; then only a ‘Mission Kakatiya’ in a Telangana, or a ‘Namami
Gange’ at the central level, or a Jaggi Vasudev’s ‘Rally for Rivers’ can
succeed, and man’s life be protected once again.
Let us raise wide and thick forests on either side of
the rivers to restore the equilibrium of nature’s symbiosis. Then only the
words ‘Uchchala jaladhi taranga’ and ‘Sujalam suphalam malayaja seetalam’ in
our national anthem and song will ring true, and our nation vibrates with milk
and honey once again.