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The Rivers In Spate: Wrath Of The Elements

By Sukumaran C. V.

05 July, 2014
Countercurrents.org

(The poem was composed in the backdrop of the June 2013 Uttarkhand flash floods that claimed more than 6000 human lives. Alakananda, one of the two headstreams of the River Ganga went in spate and swallowed everything on its way. Even the mortal remains of many of those who perished can't be found still. We can see the reasons for the river's wrath in the denuded hills and the human encroachment of the river beds and the large scale dam constructions. The tragedy was purely a man-made one. As Maharaj K. Pandit pointed out in his article, Nature avenges its exploitation', published in The Hindu (June 21, 2013), “large-scale dam building in recent years has caused massive land use changes with ensuing problems in the Himalayan watersheds. Hydropower and allied construction activities are potential sources of slope weakening and destabilisation. Massive intervention in the Himalayan ecosystems through manipulation of rivers and their hydrology, is linked to what we are witnessing today. Most downstream damage in otherwise flood-free areas is caused by dams and barrages…”

Narendra Modi government renamed the Ministry of Environment and Forests as the ‘Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change', but is going ahead with the wholesale construction of 300 large dams in the Himalayas as proposed under the UPA rule. It means that the name of the Ministry is changed, but the the wholesale devastation of the Environment and Forests won't be stopped or reversed! It means that the UPA is gone but its pro-corporate and anti-people policies remain intact and will be more pro-rich and anti environment.

Ganga is called Bhagirathi as Bhagiratha brought it down to purify the souls of his brothers. In the poem, Bhagirathaprayatna is interpreted as protecting the Environment. Let's hope that our rulers and bureaucrats who help the corporate world to destroy the Environment and the the livelihood of the poor will shun the arrogance of the sons of Sagara the ancient King, the arrogance that destroyed them and their kingdom.)

Sagara the King was a mighty ruler and had one

And sixty thousand sons who were mightier.

The trees were the mantle of Mother Earth and

They were the mighty brothers of River Ganga.

The brothers protected the River from the fury

Of the rains, and the River never ran in spate and,

The River made Sagara's kingdom a fertile land.

To conquer Mother Earth, Bhagiratha's-

Sixty thousand mightier but stupid brothers

Destroyed sixty thousand brothers of River Ganga.

And the River changed her course in spate.

Sagara's fertile kingdom turned into a desert;

Sagara's sixty thousand sons perished in the wrath,

60,000 mortal remains scattered on the river bed.

60,000 tormented souls wandered on the desert sand.


The Wrath of the Elements made

Sagara the mighty King vulnerable:

‘Shatter Mother Nature's equilibrium,

It will shatter those who shatter it'.

He bequeathed this eternal truth to his son-

Bhagiratha the next King; Bhagiratha planted

Sixty thousand trees to atone his brothers' sin and the Bhagirathaprayatna made the forests reappear; and

The River returned to the kingdom of the wise ruler.

The river bed was purified and the wandering souls

Attained moksha, the King left the Environment

Unmolested and the kingdom flourished again.

The meandering of the River underneath the mighty

Trees inspired the King's poet to see the trees

As the locks of Lord Siva the Vyomakesa and

The poet visualised the river as coming out of the Locks.


Centuries passed; moksha was commoditized.

Trees, the Locks of Lord Siva, became timber,

The holy rivers were seen as resources,

Resources are to be exploited, riverbed is

To be encroached: Development is the mantra,

Profit is the inspiration, destruction is

The means, and GREED is the foundation.

The rivers have been watching their Mother being

Dismantled and denuded by the human greed.

The rivers have been watching their brothers being

Butchered and uprooted by the human avarice.

Fury began to build up and it swept everything

And got rid the river beds of the accumulated-

Greed and avarice and purified the riverbanks;

The rivers reclaimed the encroached space in spate.

And thousands of the innocent perished in the wrath.

To attain moksha for the living and the posterity too,

To propitiate and tranquilize the rivers in spate,

To avoid the Wrath of the Elements and,

To contain the Fury of the Rivers,

Let's start another Bhagiratha prayatna,

Let's put the locks of Lord Siva back,

Let's fill the Himalayan slopes with trees.

Let's afforest all the denuded hills and mountains,

Let's stop damning the rivers by damming them and,

Let's stop destroying the still remaining rivers and forests,

Let's free the rivers we have dammed and damned and

Let's replant and regain the forests we have destroyed

And let's destroy the rivers and the forests no more.

The humans now can't afford to destroy even a single flora.

The humans now can't afford to destroy even a single fauna.

?

Sukumaran is a former JNU student. His articles on gender issues, communalism and environmental degradation are published in The Hindu. Email id —[email protected]




 

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