yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

~ Some glimpses of the few days of thrill ~   ~ Moving on a raft along the India – Bangladesh border ~ ~ In the Dampa Tiger Reserve ~ ~ Eclectic North East publishes this post in its March 2018 issue ~ The River. So little do we city bred know of a river! This stuck me on the first day of our trip and would re-visit me each day of the trip. Colours where the happy streams came down to join the river we were akin to a nature’s flowing palette; a poetic reality! Insects came out in no small numbers when our rafts bumped into vegetation along the banks. They, as if, checked us out and troubled no further. The only bridge we passed under still carried the weight of the last seasons flood.  It was neither easy nor very pleasant to imagine ourselves on the rafts with that form of the river. Within the 60 km stretch the river’s width varied from 4 to 40 meters and it had different sounds, sounds I could not comprehend. The water is in ripples where it is too sha...

The 10 th floor window offered a Dickensque view along the river. To the left a series of yellow lights reflected in the ‘full just till the need’ river and the clean and empty path along side. To the right lay darkness of an unmanaged river – as if somewhere far, very far. I was staring at the barrage on Sabarmati in Amdavad on an early winter morning. It was the River Front that lay to the left; a place the city and state prides on and which has hosted heads of states. Michael Snyder in his article ‘The Wealth of Nations’ in Caravan refers to it as “ probably the most ambitious urban planning project from an Indian city in the new century ”.  Water which reflected the yellow lights came from the Narmada. Water which would well have been in Narmada or a water deficient village! Later that morning a friend called and asked “ Have you seen the biggest plumbing project of your state? ” The manner in which he put it brought forth our craving to control, to tame. There was amp...