In water there is life and without water there is no life. Water is almost a producer of life. For a healthy India, clean potable water is the first perquisite, since more than half of human mass is only water and many diseases have links to water. From thick jungles where diverse plants and animals throng to human settlements that naturally seek water and cluster around it forever, this is one natural resource that is at the core of life on Earth.

I carried that anxiety with me for many years, unexpressed and latent – strange childhood, yes. Till 1983. An intense and mind-blowing trek through the valley of the great Narmada river in central India, endless walks along its entire length through Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat – when India, and the rest of the world, had not even woken up to the rumblings of dissent in the valley, to protests that went on to become the epitome of environmental struggles worldwide. The Narmada valley development project continues to be a big debating point in development circles the world over. This was like my initiation almost, the fascination with water had obviously taken shape.

That it is at the core is also perhaps one reason why water is used and abused so widely, across the world, by all manner of people. It is also why this is one resource that is bruised by politics, worn out by pollution, or even worshipped. From the great rivers that are India’s lifeline to little tanks in nondescript villages that do not even exist on maps, from the heightened passion of the Maha Kumbh on the banks of the Ganga at Allahabad that celebrates the cleansing ability of water, to quiet lakes in India’s bustling megapolises where busy citizens take time off to catch a moment of peace, water truly mirrors the life of India.

A large part of India’s significant environment movement has centered (quite involuntarily maybe) around water. From the early struggle to save Silent Valley (an effort to save pristine rain forests in the southern Indian state of Kerala) to the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement), water has always been there. Either as a river or as rain, either as a dying resource or as a community-built dam, the struggle has often had a lot to do with saving water, or ensuring water supply. The many plans to save the Ganga over the years have always been about trying to battle the pollution this river has been subjected to over years of use. Flowing past my office window, the Yamuna is almost a dirt drain in New Delhi. Many of India’s big lakes were or still are almost choking with pollutants. And pollution is everywhere.

Yet, the devout still throw remnants of their religious ceremonies into the river closest to them, perhaps in the hope that the river, and its swirling (or sometimes disturbingly stagnant) water, in its inherent magnanimity, will pardon all, will absorb the overload, and will continue to throb and flow and provide. The even more devout throng to the Maha Kumbh every few years in lifelong praise of water, whether they are the primordial Naga sadhus or ordinary unsung housewives who spend whole lives collecting and preserving Ganga water in their homes.

The whole spirit of water is of tranquility and peace, praise and cleansing. Yet, there are wars, and it is predicted they have only just begun. The wars may be over the use of water, over its sharing, over who gets how much. This war plays out each day, all the time, in countless Indian cities, towns, and villages. Its many scenes are depicted in the long and tired queues of women with more pitchers than they can hold, in the growing frequency of water tankers that actually sell water in many parts of the country, and in the larger political dramas that unfold around the sharing of rivers between states and the damming of water.

But water endures, and also manages to push human endurance beyond limits. It befriends, pacifies, cajoles and makes its way into the lives of the unlikeliest of people. It draws humans, animals and plants alike. It can make or break ecosystems and economies. It entices industry and beckons even the atheist. Water is at what must truly be the center of the Universe. What a place to be!

Living and seeing and feeling the enormous impact of deforestation in the lush tropical jungles of northeastern India, and in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands – in the latter half of the eighties – I learnt more and more about the abuse, and consequent centrality of water in our lives and on Earth. This learning somewhere translated into concern, or is it water worship? I ask myself that question very often – what does water really mean to me? Everything, perhaps. I remember how, in 2002, when India was reeling under a terrible drought, the economy took a real beating. And as I traveled, I saw the power of water, and of communities that rose to create and conserve water, in the villages of Alwar in Rajasthan. My love affair with(out) water continues.

Earlier I also saw, in 2004, the politics and inequality that water can bring to people – in the plush southern Indian `Silicon City’ of Hyderabad’s satellite Cyberabad, with multinational buildings all around, ordinary people struggling for water.

And yet, through all the haze, is undying worship the likes of which I witnessed at the turn of the century at the world’s largest ever gathering of human beings on Earth at the Maha Kumbh mela in Allahabad that numbered well over 30 million. When you witness the power of that simple down to Earth worship, you pack up all your concerns and stand up to celebrate – for that is what water is all about.

Copyright Pallava Bagla, 2009