Siddamma
This is a small story. Not terribly tragic, not terribly uncommon.
We live in Mysore, having moved here after many years in Bombay. Total city hicks, with idyllic ideas of ‘nature’ and ‘the countryside’.
We go bird watching every weekend, and this weekend we were especially eager with the promise of a new, unexplored lake about 15 km from home. A friend of ours, Prof. D., – a retired Zoology professor from the CFTRI – had told us about this lake, called Mooganahundi, and offered to accompany us there. He used to visit there often, upto five years ago, before osto arthritis made it difficult for him.
We set off, bright and early on a mildly misty, cool, beautiful morning with green, calm, unspoilt vistas around us. Picked up Prof. D., and drove off the outer ring road to progressively smaller winding lanes, leaving behind the sprawl of brand-new ‘development’ abutting the ring road. Many little villages and snoozing-on-the-road dogs and jowar-laid-out-on-the-road-for-threshing later, we reached the village we sought, and asked the school boys outside their school for the river. They looked at each other, mildly puzzled, and then directed us up a small rise. Leaving our car tucked out of way of passing bullock-carts, we looked around us at the quiet, lush countryside and breasted the rise with anticipation. “Where is the lake??! It’s gone!” Spread before us was a large, empty basin with a little puddle at the bottom. End to end it stretched, empty and full of weeds, bordered by an embankment. To the left of the embankment, the villagers’ crops. To the right, this empty expanse. A big, yellow board announced “Mooganahundi lake”. And this, after some of the heaviest rains in the last few decades.
We wandered up and down the embankment, seeing a marsh sandpiper, a solitary little cormorant and a couple of pond herons in the puddle. Prof. D said that the lake used to be full of waterbirds at this time of the year (mid November).
Siddamma is an approximately 45 year old villager, who, hearing that some people in a car were exploring the defunct lake, came hurrying up in the futile hope that we were ‘gormint people’ come to ‘do something’. Some four years ago, she said, the lake started drying up all of a sudden. Before that, it used to be full of birds (she called them ‘ducks’) and fish. The old local zamindar used to shoot the birds, and boys would come from adjoining villages to fish. People came from all over, she said, to see the birds. The ‘gormint’ sank a borewell beside the lake so the visitors could have drinking water. When the lake suddenly started drying up, the villagers organized a ‘puja’ with five married women, a traditional auspicious grouping I have seen in North Karnataka. A little while after the puja, the lake was completely dry. She offered other reasons. The old zamindar died; her children quarreled with her for their share of the land, and threatened to drown themselves in the lake. “Obviously, then, the lake would dry up”.
The borewell saved them, she continued. But of late, the bore too, has been yielding little water. I’d never touched a borewell handle, and now I grasped it and pumped. Some time later, a little trickle. We have asked the gormint for another bore. But there is no help, no response. What do we do?
The conversation then turned to satisfying her curiosity. Was I married? Any children? She has 4. They have x each. And so on. “I would have given you some of our vegetables. But we are totally dependent on the rains now. With the late rains, the crops dried. I planted tomatoes, and now they are growing after these rains. In another week or two, if it rains again, we’ll get our crop. Come back. I’ll give you some.”
With so little, her thought was to give me, a ‘guest’, something. What can I give her? Perhaps, perhaps, some help. I can write about her and her village. And perhaps the local gormint will investigate the causes of the lake drying up. Will sinking another bore help? Perhaps, for now, if it’s sunk deeper, as obviously the water table has dropped. Prof. D. opines that the feeder canals – lots of these lakes are man-made- have got obstructed by encroachments. I am both ashamed for doing so little, and hopeful, that these words will push the gormint to act.
Note: An article in the Hindu published nearly 3 years ago, talks about the drop in no. of waterbirds in lakes such as Mooganahundi. Does that mean Mooganahundi Lake was not dry then? It also mentions that this lake is rain, not canal-fed. Which makes the dryness really puzzling.
Read this article in the local paper, published on 17th November 2005.
We live in Mysore, having moved here after many years in Bombay. Total city hicks, with idyllic ideas of ‘nature’ and ‘the countryside’.
We go bird watching every weekend, and this weekend we were especially eager with the promise of a new, unexplored lake about 15 km from home. A friend of ours, Prof. D., – a retired Zoology professor from the CFTRI – had told us about this lake, called Mooganahundi, and offered to accompany us there. He used to visit there often, upto five years ago, before osto arthritis made it difficult for him.
We set off, bright and early on a mildly misty, cool, beautiful morning with green, calm, unspoilt vistas around us. Picked up Prof. D., and drove off the outer ring road to progressively smaller winding lanes, leaving behind the sprawl of brand-new ‘development’ abutting the ring road. Many little villages and snoozing-on-the-road dogs and jowar-laid-out-on-the-road-for-threshing later, we reached the village we sought, and asked the school boys outside their school for the river. They looked at each other, mildly puzzled, and then directed us up a small rise. Leaving our car tucked out of way of passing bullock-carts, we looked around us at the quiet, lush countryside and breasted the rise with anticipation. “Where is the lake??! It’s gone!” Spread before us was a large, empty basin with a little puddle at the bottom. End to end it stretched, empty and full of weeds, bordered by an embankment. To the left of the embankment, the villagers’ crops. To the right, this empty expanse. A big, yellow board announced “Mooganahundi lake”. And this, after some of the heaviest rains in the last few decades.
We wandered up and down the embankment, seeing a marsh sandpiper, a solitary little cormorant and a couple of pond herons in the puddle. Prof. D said that the lake used to be full of waterbirds at this time of the year (mid November).
Siddamma is an approximately 45 year old villager, who, hearing that some people in a car were exploring the defunct lake, came hurrying up in the futile hope that we were ‘gormint people’ come to ‘do something’. Some four years ago, she said, the lake started drying up all of a sudden. Before that, it used to be full of birds (she called them ‘ducks’) and fish. The old local zamindar used to shoot the birds, and boys would come from adjoining villages to fish. People came from all over, she said, to see the birds. The ‘gormint’ sank a borewell beside the lake so the visitors could have drinking water. When the lake suddenly started drying up, the villagers organized a ‘puja’ with five married women, a traditional auspicious grouping I have seen in North Karnataka. A little while after the puja, the lake was completely dry. She offered other reasons. The old zamindar died; her children quarreled with her for their share of the land, and threatened to drown themselves in the lake. “Obviously, then, the lake would dry up”.
The borewell saved them, she continued. But of late, the bore too, has been yielding little water. I’d never touched a borewell handle, and now I grasped it and pumped. Some time later, a little trickle. We have asked the gormint for another bore. But there is no help, no response. What do we do?
The conversation then turned to satisfying her curiosity. Was I married? Any children? She has 4. They have x each. And so on. “I would have given you some of our vegetables. But we are totally dependent on the rains now. With the late rains, the crops dried. I planted tomatoes, and now they are growing after these rains. In another week or two, if it rains again, we’ll get our crop. Come back. I’ll give you some.”
With so little, her thought was to give me, a ‘guest’, something. What can I give her? Perhaps, perhaps, some help. I can write about her and her village. And perhaps the local gormint will investigate the causes of the lake drying up. Will sinking another bore help? Perhaps, for now, if it’s sunk deeper, as obviously the water table has dropped. Prof. D. opines that the feeder canals – lots of these lakes are man-made- have got obstructed by encroachments. I am both ashamed for doing so little, and hopeful, that these words will push the gormint to act.
Note: An article in the Hindu published nearly 3 years ago, talks about the drop in no. of waterbirds in lakes such as Mooganahundi. Does that mean Mooganahundi Lake was not dry then? It also mentions that this lake is rain, not canal-fed. Which makes the dryness really puzzling.
Read this article in the local paper, published on 17th November 2005.
posted by AnJ at 6:15 AM
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