The Hindu Business Line : A walk along the Narmada

A telephone call from my Indore-based friend Dinesh Kothari put me on the trip to Omkareshwar. "We will walk along the banks of Narmada," he told me. We drove down in his white Maruti Zen from Indore to the Omkareshwarn dam site, where desolate men and women encased in dust put together cement, bricks and steel for supplying power and water to distant cities such as Indore.

For Jawaharlal Nehru a dam was a "modern temple"; that, like the old variant with its gods and priests, insults one with its sauciness. By around 12 in the afternoon we got to Dabri village on the Narmada river, in a timeless jog to the Arabian Sea. One understood why the swyambbu linga at Omkareshwar goes by the moniker Mahakal; there is something common between the run of a once-flourishing river and the measured tick of the watch on one's wrist.

With baggage strapped to our backs, we set out with our guide Roshanlal Yadav at one in the afternoon, to walk the around seven km stretch from Dabri to Rampura village under a 45 degrees sun.

The Narmada river curls and cuts into the rocks on its banks, making the trek a steep, strenuous and at times miserable up and down affair before we touched Rampura village at around 6.15 in the evening. On the way we passed villages like Bakhatgar where we broke for a short rest sipping Narmada's waters in bottles.

At some places one never thought one would make it though it was an easy affair for Dinesh and Roshanlal, a resident of Dabri village.

The earth and the river lie nude; birds like the blue jay, the pied and small kingfisher scan the earth for a spare tree to land; with the green gone, they have no place to build their nests and start a new generation. "Saab, hum to raat mein is rasta se aye hain. Kabhi bhi dar nahin lagta hai. Haan, jungli janwar bhi hai (I have walked this stretch in the night without fear. Yes there are wild animals in the forests)," he told me as one rested under a fruiting banyan tree overcrowded with birds like koels, Brahminy mynas, warblers and the rest. The banyan stood alone bereft of all his old companions who have gone under the axe of the forest department of the Madhya Pradesh Government.

At Rampura village, we had a cup of tea before stretching out on a string cot under a half-ripped cattle shed with a buffalo calf and a lantern-bright moon for company. The heat in the night hurt; there was no wind and one could spot the Narmada going her lonely way to somewhere, unsure of her future with the large number of dams tripping every wave of hers. Early morning a soft wind blew over to restore one's sanity. For sure, the ancient Narmada of old Hindu epics and seers will be no more. Dinesh had planned a trek further on to Dhavdikund, some 15 km away but one said a firm no as Roshanlal and many at Rampura village told us it would be "khatarnak (dangerous)", as one had to climb pristine Cambrian rocks.

Luckily, Raju a boatman, agreed to take us in his motorboat to Dhavdikund and back to Dabri village the next day. The ride to Dhavdikund was against the run of the river but we made it past gorges with black sheets of rocks piled on each other like newspapers at a raddi shop. We landed at Dhavdikund where the river, according to the Hindi writer Amritlal Vegad, is two tiered. "Yahan Narmada ka makan domanjila hai. Dhavdikund yani prapathon ka departmental store hai, (Here the Narmada is twin storey; it is the departmental store for water falls)," writes Vegad, who has walked (parikrama) the 2,600-km Narmada stretch in two stages.

From a small height, the river dips while the village youngsters sweep into the fast-flowing waters. Parents do not bother watching from far their kids diving into the water body as they are all born to it. On our trip we had picked up a middle-aged couple, who wanted to have a darshan of Dhavdikund. Noisily, the Narmada winds by jutting, black rocks placed across its flow like some weird chessboard. While the lady was preparing roti and dal-bati over a wood fire one went for a dip in the river.

Being scared of the waters, one sat safely on a rock and used a lota (like a mug) to have a bath. Resting on the rock, like some John Abraham toiletry ad, one watched a young mother with three kids, walking to the river and diving into its waters with clothes on.

The woman called to her kids as they went under water, like cormorants, and they, in turn, surfaced, challenging her to do the same. She disappeared for a moment and the game went on for quite some time. They still have laughter on them. That's their only currency.

We were back at Dabri village late in the evening with Roshanlal's wife preparing milky tea. Then followed, roti, dal and raw onions which we ate sitting on string cots under a deep-blue night sky.

By nine, Roshanlal switched on the Hindi-English radio commentary of the India-West Indies one-day match. When Sehwag was out in the 90s, he switched off the radio while one lay awake that night musing over the Narmada from a distance.

P. Devarajan

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A walk along the Narmada