“Water is Life”. This line — from the theme of this year’s World Food Day — sums up the central role of water in sustaining life on earth. Of late, much news has centred around water: the dispute about the Cauvery water-sharing, the glacial lake flood in the Teesta basin in Sikkim, the aftermath of the release of wastewater from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.
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Reading Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India’s Cities by Harini Nagendra and Seema Mundoli is a pointed reminder of our relationship with water. As the authors put it, “We cannot live without water. But it seems we cannot live with water either.” Shades of Blue, like the duo’s earlier work Cities and Canopies, is extremely reader-friendly with its large font, simple language, and charming illustrations. The authors manage the tricky balancing act of keeping the reader engaged while focusing on the urgent need to save the various waterscapes across the country by combining anecdotes, folk tales, mythological stories with sociological and scientific data.
The great divide
The opening illustration brings home the stark inequity of water distribution. The top half has people cavorting in a swimming pool while, in the bottom, a woman carries a pot of water home. Though in black and white, the gulf between the haves and have-nots is clear.
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The Yamuna flowing through Delhi. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
Beginning with water and its scientific properties, Nagendra and Mundoli go on to explore how it was managed across India in the past and today. The discussion of Delhi’s intimate connection with the Yamuna offers a quick overview of how piped water supply was established. An interesting vignette is how the boatmen of Yamuna have found new ways of making a living by revisiting their relationship with the river. ‘Walking on Water’ is a potted history of transportation on waterways and the various attempts to revive heritage canal systems. Other chapters include Bengaluru’s lakes and waterbodies, an analysis of the 2015 Chennai floods, the aftermath of dams and hydroelectric projects, the river interlinking issue and disputes over water.
The sprawling waterbody in Chembarambakkam, which was brimming with water after the deluge of 2015 in Chennai, is seen here as a grazing ground for cattle. | Photo Credit: B. Velankanni Raj
Of stepwells and wetlands
What makes this book a fun read is that one doesn’t need to read it in a linear fashion. As I skimmed over the contents, my eye was caught by the unusual chapter title ‘Tinker, Tailor, Mapper, Spy’. It was about the British mission to map the course of the Brahmaputra without alerting the Chinese and the colonial administration’s use of various Indians to achieve their purpose.
Located on Hailey Road near Connaught Place in New Delhi, the 60-metre-long stepwell Ugrasen Ki Baoli is a protected monument by the Archaeological Survey of India. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
Another plus is how the authors allow the reader to make the connections without beating one over the head. Whether it is the baolis of Delhi, the stepwells of Rajasthan and Gujarat, the lakes of Bengaluru, or the wetlands of Chennai and Kolkata, Nagendra and Mundoli not only highlight the water management systems of the past but also how citizen activism has helped renew and revive waterbodies today. The information is spread across various chapters but the connections leap to the eye as one reads on.
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Rani Ki Vav in Patan, Gujarat, has been listed as one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in India since 2014. | Photo Credit: Vivek Bendre
Creatures in the lake
If ‘Is All Well With Our Cities’ has you down in the dumps, I would recommend turning to ‘Fantastic Beasts and Other Monsters’, which draws from folklore and mythology to talk about strange creatures found in lakes, ponds, seas and the ocean. Pointing out that even the most inaccessible mountains have been explored, the authors write: “The waters of the ocean are far less explored, though. What lies within their depths?” Another must-read chapter is ‘Songs of the River’, which begins with Woody Guthrie’s ‘Roll on Columbia’ and moves on to film songs, Carnatic music and the songs by local communities, especially Dalits. They also explain how the ancient tradition of water music in Vanuatu is being used “as a medium to carry the message of climate justice from the islands of Vanuatu across the world.” The chapter ends with the songsters from the waters such as the blue whale and the bottlenose dolphin.
A view of the Cauvery near Srirangam in Tiruchi. | Photo Credit: M. Moorthy
As I close the book, I recall a friend’s description of how the Cauvery’s banks in Srirangam were overflowing with people on Aadi Perukku earlier this year. The festival celebrates the river overflowing its banks and is a symbol of fertility. Clearly, the connections to water are still strong. Can we not strengthen these connections and think of water as something that is needed for more than just our homes and industries?
Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India’s Cities; Harini Nagendra and Seema Mundoli, Penguin/ Viking, ₹499.
krithika.r@thehindu.co.in