We walk past Cooum River and its waterways with covering our whole face, wearing a mask or just closing our nose. At one point we get past the river; but the river never goes past us. It always acquaints some of us, what would it to do cover itself from people’s reeking conscience?
Like criminals and convicts who hide their face after committing a crime, we people after making a see-through pure waterway muck, hide our faces. Globalization and industrialization is just an excuse for our gaucherie. Deranging a city that was India’s Venice is untenable.
Photos of old Madras’ cooum will bead our eyes and bleed our hearts because of what we’ve done to it now. How resourceful it was and glorious was its past? What’s its origin? Knows not this ‘developed’ generation of sinecure. Kosasthalam River became distributaries when it goes through the Kesavaram dam of Vellore. One stream flows towards the Cooum village of Thiruvallur district. It then diverts towards Chennai earning the name ‘Cooum River’.
Cooum in Thiruvallur is revered as an incarnation of Thripurandhaka nayaki Amman of that village. It is a part of Indian and especially of Tamil culture, worshipping rivers as an incarnation of Goddess Shakti. This 75 KM long river is the shortest in India of which 22 KM runs through Chennai. This river has earned the sobriquet ‘South India’s Thames’. But only a part of Thames’ history is relatable to our cooum river.
Thames too due to industrial revolution became unbearably polluted. The people of London were alarmed just before it became too late to restore it to its pristine form. The first sentence alone stands true to our Chennai’s Thames. What about the second?
The study by Anna university’s environmental students gave a disheartening declaration of ‘Biologically dead’ to our Cooum river. How does a river become biologically dead? When its aquatic habitat depletes and when its oxygen level is abysmally low. What and who is responsible here? Poor understanding/audacity of industrialists and general public or well understood economics of kickbacks by politicians or both.
Only lack of planning or lackluster planning has put the River in desolation. We can now, only take inspiration from the Thames to restore our Chennai’s Thames. These are the kind of issues that governmental planning alone can’t work wonders. People ought to be educated about the indispensability of River and educated people should become sensible and sensitive to river pollution.
A 1928 poem of V.H Shipley mocks the river or speaks the reality of our hypocrisy as ‘‘of dirt and smell your sources wake…. And near the sea where one would think your water might be cleaner, it forms a cesspit by the bridge, adjoining the marina. Oh viscid stream! Oh smelling flood! Oh green and beastly river!’’.
The onus is on us to change this shameful reality.
- AKSHAY.
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