At midday this past Saturday, as the bunches of colorfully-dressed locals of Kirtipur and Lalitpur—standing on both sides of the river--danced to Panche Baja, grey and blue rafts bobbed on the river upstream of Sundarghat bridge. Soon, the rafts filled with young volunteers--dedicated to cleaning up the river—reached its put-out point. Marking the grand finale of the Bagmati River Festival 2011, the short Bagmati rafting excursion had started from Teku Dovan, the confluence of the Bagmati and Vishnumati.
HOPE IN THE AIR
The mood in the city was that of gloom and doom. Nearly a week of Jhalanath Khanal´s resignation, no new Prime Minister was in sight. The constitution- and the peace-building exercises looked stuck and standing still--at the Midnight of May 28 itself, when the Constituent Assembly (CA)´s term was extended for three months. Even as the August 31 deadline loomed large, the progress was almost zero as of Monday. Yet the central stretch of the Bagmati in the city--from Tripureshwar to Sundarighat—looked different.
It was filled with hopes. The air—and the cool breeze that beat the scorching heat—was laden with optimism. The atmosphere was teeming with positive activities: Rafting, heritage walk, banks and temple clean-up drives. A gaggle of youngsters cleaned and painted the historic Kalmochan temple, thanks to Mark Zuckerberg´s facebook-inspired social networking. Another group went for a walk along the riverfront famous for its medieval-era temples and shades. Including Hindu crematoriums, where pyres are laid and last rites performed.
The river is the source of our life; a lot of Kathmanduites drink the Bagmati waters tapped from its source on the slopes of Shivapuri hills. Our life revolves around it as we grow up, as we grow old. And when we die, we are cremated and laid to rest on its "holy" banks (if we are Hindus that is). We may have different faiths, yet our religions teach us to revere water, revere the river(s). The Bagmati--a remnant of the paleo-lake that once covered the entire valley before it started draining millions of years ago--is the mother of Kathmandu civilization.
As politicians failed this past weekend, volunteers demonstrated never-say-die spirit and teamed up to clean up the ´holy´ Bagmati banks. And that instills some hope.
BAGMATI CRUSADERS
The river is also the mirror of our civilization, of our times, and of our actions. Keeping that in mind, a few campaigners—like Hutaram Baidya (who is 92 and is still going strong on the Bagmati, with his second book on the Bagmati published recently) and Bhagawan Das Manandhar (who died recently) tried their best to protect the river. We grew up in the Eighties and Nineties, swimming in clean and clear waters of the river. We still long to do so.
But we can´t. Collectively, we haven´t been able to do justice to the river, and its major tributaries like the Vishnumati, the Tukucha, the Dhobikhola, the Manohara and the Hanumante. All of them have turned into open sewers. As Kathmandu valley grows—its population is believed to have crossed four million—the river´s plight has gone from bad to worse.
The causes are: Excessive tapping of the spring waters right from the sources at Shivapuri; dumping of sewerages and domestic and industrial liquid plus solid wastes; reckless sand mining; and massive encroachment of the rivers´ banks by "landless" squatters, individuals and real estate-developers. Even as it happened, we have stayed mute spectators for the most part.
Yet there´s some hope. Alongside the growing social mobilization to clean up the river, like the one seen this past weekend, government bodies such as the Nepal Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) and the Integrated Bagmati Civilization Development Committee (IBCDC) are working to intercept the capital´s sewerage. Funneling around Rs 16 billion, they are planning to treat and filter all the liquid wastes before they flow down into the Bagmati or its other tributaries. That will definitely time. And there are fears that stuff like over politicization of the state bodies, corruption and red-tape could hamper the project, render it defunct.
´HISTORY´
Back to the Bagmati banks. At dusk on Saturday, as the local artistes and bands belted out their best, and the concert-goers cheered and danced. That may have been a pleasant sight. But something was amiss—terribly amiss--this year. "We couldn´t organize rafting races from Sundarijal-to-Gokarna this year, we are really sorry," said Megh Ale, the new Bagmati man with Nepal River Conservation Trust, which has been organizing the Bagmati Festival since 2000.
The reason, he said, "The river´s natural course had been destroyed. It is no longer natural and bending, it´s not suitable for rafting anymore. Rafting in Sundarijal is history now." And the reason for that is the latest effort by the Integrated Bagmati Civilization Development Committee (IBCDC) to re-divert the river back to its 1963 flow—something officially drawn up in the government maps. And the result? The Bagmati´s banks have been stone-walled on both sides, and the river flows like a narrow canal.
That kind of sorry state of the Bagmati reminded me of the US Singer Don Henley who once sang:
The rains have come early, they say
We’re all gonna wash away
Well, that’s all right with me
If heaven’s torrent can wash clean
The arrogance that lies unseen
In the damage done since we have gone
Where we ought not to be
Goodbye to a river
Goodbye to a river
So long
The writer is a BBC correspondent, who has researched and written extensively on nature and environment
nepal.surendra@gmail.com
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