Vigil over, but void begins8230;

Where once there was a bustling town, there is now a silent swamp. In and around it rise bits of coloured concrete. A green wall, a blue one...

Where once there was a bustling town, there is now a silent swamp. In and around it rise bits of coloured concrete. A green wall, a blue one with a wooden shelf, a yellow door. A chaotic coloured mosaic. As the water level rose in the Bhagirathi last week, submerging large parts of old Tehri, it buried under it its past. In this graveyard of misshapen bricks, only the clocktower built in 1897 AD to commemorate the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria stands high.

The tide has taken away with it the last of this 189-year-old town8217;s persistent residents. But still there are shadows, shuffling among the skeletons of stones. A few straddlers who had never expected the water to rise so high and so fast. Sunil Kumar Rana had a court case pending and had not left the town. 8216;8216;I have lost everything. It just came so fast and before I knew, my house was under it.8217;8217; No one is allowed to remain in the town but a few people have taken refuge in public buildings and temples that are still intact, collecting whatever is left of their belongings before moving out.

8216;8216;The rehabilitation of old Tehri is complete,8217;8217; says Puneet Kansal, the district magistrate of New Tehri and director of rehabilitation.

A finality that is reinforced with the shifting out of Sunderlal Bahuguna, the face of the anti-dam struggle. Bahuguna had often said he was the 8216;chowkidar8217; of Tehri and would be the last to leave. Sitting in his new house in Koti, overlooking a colony for dam employees, Bahuguna appears resigned. 8216;8216;Of course, I miss the old town. There were so many people there,8217;8217; he says. Inside the house, lanterns flicker in the breeze, lighting up the silhouettes of the row of rooms in the double-storey house built in traditional Pahari style. Bahuguna sits talking quietly with his family and visitors. The DM and his entourage come calling, asking him if he needs anything.

Bahuguna maintains that dams are just a 8216;8216;temporary solution to a permanent problem8217;8217; but says he has moved on from the phase of direct struggle to the larger one of spreading awareness.

Away from Koti and 25 km uphill from old Tehri is its successor, New Tehri. Along the winding road are occasional boards, exhorting people to support the dam. 8216;Swa hith is pehle rashtriya hith8217; put the nation8217;s welfare before yours says one.

Built at Rs 250 crore, New Tehri is a bureaucrat8217;s dream in cement. Well-lit roads, pink and beige houses and apartments that look suspiciously like each other and rows of shuttered shops 8212; there are about 1,041 of them. The old town8217;s clocktower has been replicated. A big gurudwara and a few temples have come up but the town is yet to get a cinema hall.

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Built on three levels, down below lies Bhagirathipuram 8212; a dam township. Baurari, a market-cum-residential area for rehabilitated families, comes next and above it stand government offices. The headquarter of Tehri district was shifted from Narendranagar to New Tehri in 1989. A 2001 census puts the population of old Tehri at 14,954 and New Tehri at 25,423 but it has gone up to 30,000 with not just rehabilitated families but also people from other towns shifting in.

Trying to live up to its prefix, New Tehri has acquired an ATM. Aspiring to be part of urban India, a signboard says: Basant Vihar, Sector 3-A.

Old Tehri was built by King Sudershan Shah in 1815 as his kingdom8217;s capital. Here, the name of a mohalla gave away the caste and sub-caste of its residents. 8216;8216;In the old town, there was the old Durbar mohalla, Raghunath mohalla, Muslim mohalla,8217;8217; says Mahipal Singh Negi, a freelance journalist. 8216;8216;Now our identity has been reduced to Type 2/7D.8217;8217;

Susheel Ghildiyal, known as the X-ray doctor, is trying to get a shop to start work again. But he fears the patients will be fewer. 8216;8216;Old Tehri was linked to other villagers8230;but this is away from the road,8217;8217; he says. Being on the yatra route, old Tehri did good business.

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It8217;s not just about adjustment, it8217;s also about acclimatising. New Tehri is built at a height of 1,400 to 1,900 metre, more than double that of the old town. 8216;8216;There are so many more steps to climb here,8217;8217; says Ghildiyal.