July 26, 2005. Tuesday morning saw the commercial
capital of India wake up and go to work, never mind that there had been 24
hours of heavy rain. And the rains came down and continued coming down. The
waters started rising. And Mumbai took it in its stride. A resilient city with
a survivor instinct. People laughed, joked, jostled each other and couldn’t
care less. Drank a few extra cups of steaming hot tea at work perhaps, and
hoped the city’s overcrowded, bursting-at-the-seams trains wouldn’t run too
late (late is expected!)
Under the city, it was a different story. This
time, said the river that people had forgotten about, this time I’m going to
come up like the Loch Ness monster and give them a bit of a fright. Forget me,
will they?
Not many people in Mumbai know about the Mithi
River. Not even people like me who lived there for 20 years! It originates at
Vihar and flows meandering past Powai Lake, one of the freshwater lakes
supplying the city’s drinking water, down to Mahim Creek 16 kilometres away,
where it empties itself into the sea. ‘A river?’ ask most people incredulously.
‘We thought it was a drain!’
That’s what the river is treated like today.
Discharge of raw sewage, industrial waste and garbage choke its course.
What right had they to change my course,
wondered the once free flowing, peaceful river? I was the city’s artery. The
Thames and the Seine are fussed over by their city fathers. What happened to
me? I want justice!
Can large cities take matters into their own
hands and change the course of Nature? Can they build two airports – one
domestic and one international - that cut off the flow of the river? Even
recently, the airport has been reclaiming bits and pieces of land near the
river, in one case filling in a 50-metre wide stream running into the river.
And when the taxiway was extended, airport officials had the unmitigated gall
to say it was not blocking the river, but being built on a bridge to allow
water to flow below it! (Turned it invisible, did they?)
Can the greed and neglect of materialistic city
fathers alter every curve of the river? And the area where it enters the Mahim
Creek is supposed to be a protected bird sanctuary. Did anyone know? More
important, did anyone care? What birds, when it has been reduced to a stinking
gutter? And the city where dreams were only of pots of gold at the end of long
train rides, long working hours and long lists of to-dos never looked up from
their blinkered rat-race existence to protest. Where was the time?
The mouth of the river that was 1200 metres wide
has now been reduced to a drain-like size of 300. And even that part is being
coveted by developers who would like to build a spanking new sea-link from one
point of the city to another.
How do you get rid of a river? Simple. So simple.
You fill it up and concretize it, providing tiny drains for the water to flow.
And when the area gets flooded during the drains, out come the pumps to pump
out the water.
They’ve tied me up, locked me in, ravaged me,
abused me. And now they drain the very lifeblood out of me. Now I need an eye
for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.
13 years ago, the road to Vihar was blocked for
‘security reasons’. Tonnes of earth have been dumped and lo and behold, it
seems a road is being built – a road that passes two seven-star hotels. A river
that was the city’s means of draining out the water during the rains into the
sea, a river that was the city’s insulation against flooding, a river that was
Nature’s gift…. pillaged, plundered, heartlessly raped.
But Nature, especially Water is a potent,
powerful force that like a serpent bides it time and strikes true and hard. The
26th December tsunami was a testimony to that. This river, too,
waited for its day of reckoning and struck back. For 4 days, the city of Mumbai
came to a standstill. Knee-deep to neck-deep water everywhere. No electricity,
no water, no transport, no phones. All flights grounded. Cars abandoned on
every road, floating in water. So many innocent lives lost, human and animal,
so much damage, so much waste. And the sad part? We were responsible.
Sometimes, said the river, the mills of God
grind slowly. Justice is served. A very, very wet justice! And if there’s no
reparation, wait till the next rains come around!
