childhood memories

Rivers and us, it’s simple. We didn’t need to spend too much time on what we would name this blog. We want to use this platform to talk about rivers and what they mean to us, inviting as many people as possible to share their experiences and stories. City life doesn’t offer one many chances to witness a river in all its rapturous glory. Most rivers in the city are tamed and packaged to cater to groups of loud, boisterous, picnicking families and tourists. At least the fortunate ones are, the rest are merely carriers of sewage.

As much as we’d like to disassociate ourselves from such embarrassing childhood memories (like almost drowning and being rescued only to find your swimming trunks weren’t as fortunate) most of us have at least one childhood memory revolving around some water body: a river, a lake or a pond. So, what is your happy memory? We’d love to hear it. Drop us a comment.

Rivers and us

Well, ok. So the first questions would be, why rivers and why us. And hot on the heels of those would be ‘Who is us?’

It will be tough to separate the first two, they are linked so. We are a part of an NGO called the People’s Science Institute (PSI) that works in the central Himalayas, mainly in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh. Uttarakhand is the birthplace of many magnificent rivers, chief of which is the Ganga. Rivers are likened to mothers for a very simple reason- they support life. Not only are riparian and freshwater ecosystems dependent upon them, but so are civilizations. The various kinds of life that rivers support, from the iconic Gangetic Dolphin to the humble mayfly, have their roles in keeping our web of life intact. Even if we were to consider it purely from a human point of view, it would be a sad, lonely, inhospitable world if rivers ceased to flow.

Sadly, that is just what is happening in most of the world. Excessive consumption, indiscriminate damming, and unrestricted pollution are all combining forces to kill our rivers. In Uttarakhand and other Himalayan states, the mind-boggling number of dams is killing our rivers and our mountains in one fell swoop.

And that is why rivers and why us.

But ‘us’ is not just this little group of enthusiastic river-lovers, or just PSI. It is everyone who feels a connection to a river, any river, and considers rivers worth protecting.