The many beloved faces of the Krishna...and now this

Drenched. Soaked. Dripping. Wet. Floods. Deluge. Isolated. Rescue. Discharge. Cusecs... I’ve hardly used any other words these past 72 hours. Sitting on the third floor of my newspaper’s Sangli office, I’m trying to surface from the waters engulfing me. The first question I ask my friend is how can I get out of this city. Normally a man of great wit, he fumbles for an answer, makes a couple of calls on his mobile, and tells me, “It's difficult.”

He wears a big question mark on his face when I tell him that I would like Kolhapur to be my next destination. His face tells me that this is too much to ask for. I have much to thank for. I am now thinking from the relative safety of the third floor, even though the building itself is marooned. Yesterday around noon, I was standing in the chest-deep waters of the Krishna, holding a bar attached to a submerged paan shop. It was still pouring. Actually, it hardly ever stopped.

A young boy was peering out of the window of his flooded home and in front of us was the raging Krishna. Mud-red, and mad. The paan shop I was clinging to was the last tangible sign of human existence. I always remember the Krishna with fascination. The Krishna at its origin; one of the five rivers originating from the undulating Western Ghat hills. The serene Krishna I experienced from the ghats at Menavali village. Then, the temples on its banks at Wai. One of the temples is dedicated to the river itself, a sign of the reverence people feel for its bounty. Here the river becomes Krishnabai, a close relative. Krishnabaicha Utsav, the Krishna festival, is a significant event in Wai’s cultural life. Yet, this is where the Krishna picks up its first bit of pollution - at the exposed rocky river bed where it crosses the Bangalore highway.

Then there is the Krishna cutting a serpentine swathe through the soothing green of cash crops seen from the heights of Sagareshwar hill. The Krishna here emerges as a vital catalyst for the region’s economy. The Krishna at Sangli is another phenomenon. Then there is the wide expanse of the Krishna waters below Almatti.

Yet, the Krishna in front of me now is just a massive flow of water, taking away everything. People, homes, cattle, everything. I think of the people who I just saw embarking from a small wooden boat. Sujata Todkar, a young college student, was helping her old grandmother out of the floods. There was a baby, who, I was told, had been running a fever for two days. These simple, rustic people are devastated. But they are fighting. “Have you had your lunch?” a young villager asks me solicitously as we both walk from neck-deep waters into knee-deep waters. “It’s the Krishna,” I tell myself.

(First published in The Maharashtra Herald on August 4, 2005)