Experiences along the Yamuna

The Yamuna Katha members were in for three different experiences on day three: wrestling, boat ride and a traditional story telling session.

Destination one was Sanjay Pehelwan Akhara (akhara is the place where traditional wrestling is taught to youngsters). Stepping into the akhada premises was like stepping into an altogether different world. Surrounded by trees, the Spartan semi-kuchcha structures which housed the trainees and the main wrestling square, all pointed to the same thing.

The akhara is a residential training centre for twelve plus youngsters mostly from Haryana and a few from Bihar. The barely 20-feet X 20-feet ground is specially prepared with soft yellow soil mixed with turmeric, henna and sarso oil (mustard oil) is the ground zero for the budding wrestlers. The routine starts early morning and follows a strict regiment. The youngsters cover themselves profusely with mustard oil before starting their work outs.  

“After a rigourous training session, we take bath. Now-a-days, because the Yamuna is so polluted, we use tap water. But earlier, it used to be: jump into river directly.

Not just the Sanjay Pehelwan Akhada, almost all the akharas prefer the sylvan surroundings and locations slightly away from the hustle and bustle of the city life. So was this place long time ago, when it was started. Slowly, although the surroundings underwent drastic change, the just-insides of the akhara remain the same, well almost. “Inside the akhara, you do not feel like it is Delhi,” said Vidhu Narayanan, a core team member.       

The Yamuna Experience

Exploration of the Yamuna turned to the “experience” of Yamuna when team Yamuna Katha went for a boat ride. The starting point for the boat ride at the dusty Qudasia ghat, opposite the ISBT Kashmere Gate, was an eye-opener. The team members came face to face with the wide deep black stinking drain that we call as Yamuna.     

At the bank, with the ghat towering above the water level, it was hard to imagine that what we were looking at was indeed Yamuna. But to far north-east as the Yamuna curved its way downstream towards Qudasia ghat, it offered a beautiful vista.

Yamuna Katha yatri Dwijender Kalia led the tour with doling out relevant information about almost each point of the ghat and the surroundings and most important, about the sewage drains that empty into the Yamuna. For most of the team members, passing right in front of the Nigambodh Ghat, the traditional place where Hindus burn their deceased, was the first of its kind experience. Bodies burning, half lit pyres and the horde of relatives and friends of the persons whose bodies were being given the last rites ...

“After Varanasi, this Nigambodh Ghat is the most important in whole of north India. It is believed that once when Vedas had gone missing, the scripts were found floating at this ghat. So the place is associated with knowledge (bodh is knowledge) and hence the name,” chipped in Kaliaji.   

A constant throughout the journey was the garbage, plastic bags, flower and other pooja waste thrown recklessly and several other things, the very things that just went on to add to the pollution of Yamuna. The stretch between Qudasia ghat till the Park also has a number of bridges that connect the two banks, starting from the road bridge that takes traffic to and from ISBT Kashmere Gate to east Delhi, the Metro rail bridge and the Old Loha Pur (the old iron bridge).

Dumping puja material into the Yamuna is also a source of
pollution (photo: Alex Koecher)

Surprisingly, when in the boat right in the middle of the Yamuna, although we were surrounded by filthy dark black toxic water, there was no stink in the air.    

But somewhere in the cacophony of the various sounds, the railway train passing over the old Loha Pul, the metro rain chugging past on the recent concrete bridge, the honking of horns of the vehicles zooming past the newly built by-pass ... somewhere in all this, the sound of Yamuna a river was lost.

Dastangoi: Tales from Tilism-e-Hoshruba

The ramparts of the Purana Qila, a mid-16^th century Mughal era structure protected by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), were aglow with different lights focused on the small stage at the entrance of the gate towards Yamuna. The mesmerizing moon rose slowly above the eastern wall. Dastangoi – the traditional art of storytelling – is being revived as an art form by Dastak theatre group. The session at the Purana Quila saw performances by Yojit Singh & Ankit Chadha followed by Mahmood Farooqui & Danish Husain.

The two main characters of the presentation are Amir Hamza and Amar Aiyyar, whose adventures are documented as oral anecdotes over the years. For further information on Dastangoi please see yesterdays post.

The team returned to the hotel, still talking about the different experiences.   

The grandmasters at stage: Danish Hussain and Mahmood Farooqui
are performing an age-old story at the ramparts of
Purana Quila (photo: Alex Koecher)

Living on the Yamuna Bank

Yamuna hardly finds a mention in day-to-day conversations of Delhiites. So for Shubham Mishra, another member of the core team of Yamuna Katha, it was a realization, brought in by the Yamuna itself.

Shubham’s home is near Rajghat, on the Ring road, metres away from Yamuna. Rajghat, more famous for Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial today, was once a prosperous ghat (stepped embankment) of the Yamuna. It was exclusive for the royalty and hence the name Raj ghat.

But like most of the Delhiites of his age, Shubham, a trained urban planner, only knew, yes, Delhi has river. But once in while there is heavy flooding and the banks are submerged. “Then we realize we have a river,” Shubham says as he recalls the days of frenzy that come with the floods.

But slowly, the flood plains were reclaimed and exploited for commercial purpose. And the places are many. Qudasia ghat, the Yamuna Bazar, the Rajghat, power plants near ITO and now, sanitized, landscaped gardens, not to mention the number of bridges and flyways… the metro stations, Akshardham temple … and the list goes on endless.

“If we build on the floodplains, the water will always find its way back,” Shubham points out.

Shubham, who has been constantly visiting the Yamuna banks for the last two months, has discovered a new passion. Toponomy – the branch of lexicology that studies the place names of a region or a language – of the various ghats has intrigued him no end. “Come to think of it, there were different names for each of these ghats. Now, all we have is ghat number 1 to 32 at Yamuna Bazar.”

Losing the names is akin to losing an identity, says Shubham, who loves Yamuna and Delhi equally. “The very fact that the each of the places had a different name, means these places were different. Today, everything looks the same. Each of these ghats had a different purpose to fulfill. It gives us a glimpse of what kind of river front existed then? Qudasia ghat was different and so was the ghat in front of Kotla.”

Today, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) is planning a sanitized and concretized riverfront, something, which is likely to be built in clichéd sarkari style. But even when such a riverfront comes up, would the Delhiites sit in front of a stinking filthy river that is almost a drain today?

Shubham’s no nonsense reply: “First there has to be a river, there has to be water in it.”

Yamuna: A Paradise Lost

There goes this famous anecdote about Hazrat Nizamuddin, the Sufi saint residing in Delhi in the early 14^th century. When he saw an old lady drawing water from a well even when she lived near Yamuna, he asked her why.

“My husband is very old. We have nothing to eat. Yamuna’s water is very tasty, so tasty that it induces hunger. I don’t want this to happen to us,” the lady replied.

Can anyone say this about Yamuna waters today? Till about 50 years ago, the Yamuna was very much clean, even in Delhi. As the demographic change took place over the years, the late 1980s saw the population explosion and the new millennium saw widespread migration from hinterlands to the national capital, the stress on the Yamuna only increased.

That exactly is what ails the Yamuna today. Shubham does the math: “Earlier, the population was much lesser and scattered. The resources were de-centralized. Delhi had hundreds of lakes, ponds, wells and baolis (step wells). On the one hand, people were dependent on the water bodies in their areas and on the other hand, there was hardly any human waste flowing into the river.”

Today, the situation is exactly reversed. Delhi is entirely dependent on the Yamuna to cater to its drinking water needs. And at the same time, the river is used as a channel for disposal of sewage, creating two-way pressure on the Yamuna.

The Yamuna was never seen in isolation all these centuries. People were always aware of the connection … through surface channels or through underground aquifers. He asks how can anyone forget Neher-i-Bahisht?

There was this all wonderful canal system. In 14^th century, the Tughlaq dynasty built the Neher-i-Bahisht (literally, stream of paradise) parallel to the river. It was later restored during the Mughal rule in the early 17^th century by Ali Mardan Khan, an engineer in the Mughal court. The canal started from Benawas, near the place where Yamuna enters the plains and after running through almost the entire cluster of ancient villages, reached the medieval city of Shahjahanabad only after which it drained into the Yamuna.

The Neher-i-Bahisht was in reality, the stream of paradise. It was an apt description of the phenomenon – of providing the elixir of life to people on its banks, making Delhi the very heaven people crave to get to, turning it into a paradise that brought calm into the Delhi walas life.

But where has this paradise gone? It seems we have lost this paradise and how?

Sums up Shubham: “Do we have any other option but to decentralize and take the pressure off the Yamuna?”