I first met the river Yamuna as a child at Allahabad. Peeping through the railway bridge and glancing at the river far below me, amidst the clatter and rattle of the bridge, the awesome sight was for me like nothing else before it. The vast turquoise blue waters, in all their swirling majesty, are even now a part of the deeper recesses of my consciousness.From time to time, I kept encountering the river. I met the Ganga at Allahabad. It was monsoon time and the river was in swift flow. That first view at the confluence at Sangam created a feeling of awe. The river was mighty and forceful. What would happen if the boat in which I was traveling capsized?In later years, whenever I encountered the river, the thought that came to mind was of the entire way of life which was being governed by these two rivers. It was the British, I think, who viewed our rivers as inanimate waters merely to be exploited by constructing dams and barrages. The Indian people down the ages did not think of rivers in quite the same way. Instead rivers, and especially the Ganga and Yamuna, were embedded in legend and mythology, folk stories and life routines for all those who lived along their course. The rivers surpassed their banks generously for half the year, over-powering and inundating whatever came their way. They brought prosperity to those who cultivated lands there. The boatmen earned their livelihood from the movements of passengers. Vegetables and fruits grew in abundance.Apart from the Ganga and Yamuna, there is a third river, namely Saraswati. No one has seen the river. Where it originates from and where it is subsumed into, is a mystery. It is largely a matter of faith. Enormous change has overtaken these rivers. I saw the Ganga at Patna last year. At places, the river has shrunk pitifully and petered into a thin stream. Sewage and city effluents flow ceaselessly into it. The river bed is considerably shallower. Recently I travelled over the river Yamuna in Delhi. Its channels have narrowed. Its vast expanse is now part of history. Even the old railway bridge is not as commanding a sight as it used to be. In fact, even the prosperity, which earlier came though cultivation along its banks, now comes from elsewhere. Only the memories of the years gone by flow into the future.
