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Published: November 5th 2007
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Inert traveller
Whether the river flows past the island or the island floats upstream, they know all about each other. I missed the picture. A blue train filled with pilgrims in red. The train crossed my train before I could even think of a picture. As Preethesh Babu and I sat watching an English news bulletin at his house in Rajahmundry that evening, a neighbour - a pious woman - pointed to the TV and said, ‘Vijayawada’. All we could see were Buddhist monks in their red robes protesting the military regime in Myanmar. But in this part of Andhra at this time of the year, every road leads to Vijayawada. Pilgrims wore red, kept their vows and flocked to the Kanaka Durga temple on the banks of the Krishna River.
Five days later, I trace the pilgrims’ path. They dominate all the ten platforms of Vijayawada railway junction. They are everywhere in the city, which offers a curious mix of the religious, revolutionary and reel icons. Marx, Engels and Lenin rub shoulders with Chiranjeevi, Pavan Kalyan and other Telugu matinee idols in Vijayawada’s skyline. The communist parties have a strong foothold in this city. But this is the season of the divine red.
The road to the Kanaka Durga temple is unmistakable. Red towels, on which the pilgrims
Three men on a boat
The Prakasham Barrage on the Krishna river ensures steady supply of water to Vijayawada. slept the previous night, are strewn all over the pavement. The vast bathing ghat on the left side of the road to Hyderabad is filled with pilgrims. They take turns to dip in the Krishna waters before queuing up for tonsuring their heads. Then they would trek up the hill to the temple overlooking the river. But I turn the other way, to the river.
On a lead from a temple official, I walk up the road. An Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation boat is ready to ferry passengers to Bhavani Island across the river. A team of boys with cricket bats and stumps, half a dozen lovebirds and a lone traveller on board. We cross the Krishna, the lifeline tamed by the 1223 metre-long Prakasham Barrage a little downstream.
Vijayawada is demarcated by four canals originating from the river. The city is surrounded by hillocks, located on the Eastern Ghats chain. Its strategic position (on Chennai-Kolkata, Machlipatnam-Hyderabad-Delhi routes) and the fertile soil make it the third largest city in Andhra Pradesh though the district headquarters is Machlipatnam. If Hyderabad is famed for biriani, Vijayawada offers fish galore (and those spicy pickles).
We get a better view
A time to live
Life is elsewhere, it's here on this island of the 50-year-old barrage and the hill temple from Bhavani Island. The island is a lovers’ paradise, complete with river-facing benches and elevated cottages. It is also a place for recluses, away from the din of the city. Whoever comes here, will have to buy their food. ‘Outside food not allowed’ says a board on our starting point on the other side of the river. The restaurants on the island are inviting enough.
The two shores are poles apart. When frenzied drivers honk down each other under a blazing sun across the river, young lovers overcome the hesitation of the first kiss protected by a canopy of magnanimous trees. The Indrakiladri hill, where Kanaka Durga temple and Malleswara Swamy temple are situated, is visible from here. The hill can be identified from anywhere in the city by the huge ‘Om’ installed on it.
Emaciated fishermen on mechanized boats crisscross the lake-like river, indifferent to the gaiety on this side and the piety on the other. Vijayawada has the charms of a coastal town with the platter of seafood it offers. Compared to other cities, fish is cheap here, thanks to the Krishna. Prakasham Barrage ensures steady water supply
India Shining
Oblivious to the pulls and pushes of the city, siesta on the many bridges of Viayawada. to Vijayawada like (Arthur) Cotton Barrage, which tames the Godavari for Rajahmundry.
Unlike Krishna, Godavari has only a few reservoirs on its long course. But the mother of all dams, Indira Sagar at Polavaram on the Godavari, will link the two mighty rivers through a 174 kilometre-long canal. Together, Krishna and Godavari deltas ensure south Indians their staple diet - rice. Krishna basin holds 10.4 % of the total culturable area of the country and Godavari basin 9.7 %. The Krishna-Godavari basin is also a petroleum mine, where the public sector Oil and Natural Gas Corporation is at work.
There are many ways to explore a river. Merely gazing at it is one. Either the blue water is flowing downstream or the long island moving upstream. The shore knows all about the route from the memoirs of the river. Of the Buddhist centres of Amaravati and Nagarjunakonda, of the muddy waters of Tungabhadra and Malaprabha, and of Mahabaleswar in the Western Ghats, where it starts the 1300 kilometre-journey.
Krishna, which originates 64 kilometres off the Arabian Sea, covers three states before emptying into the Bay of Bengal. The river, which carries with it the waters of its tributaries in Maharashtra and Karnataka, is the subject of a murky inter-state water dispute. The Krishna Water Disputes Tribunal was constituted in 2004 for adjudicating the dispute over water sharing among Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
The fishermen are returning after the day’s catch. They start work at dawn and go home by afternoon. I lie down on the ground looking at the branches bordering the azure sky, a luxury reserved for holidays. The sky no longer exists in the city. An eagle hovers over the river, probably eying dead fish in the boats. It suddenly shifts direction and goes behind the foliage. When it emerges, it has a shrieking parrot in its talons.
The game is not over. Maybe it’s the second innings. The return boat is less crowded. Nobody would want to leave this inert paradise. Past more lovebirds, I find a seat at the AP tourism hotel in the mainland. I order mutton dum biriani, but they serve me something equally spicy and salty. But the taste of last night’s meal, topped up with cool curd and endemic varieties of pickles, still lingers. Andhra cuisine is a vegan’s delight.
The sights reclaim their pompous and polluted qualities on the way to the city centre. Junior NTR’s filmy cutouts outnumber the bronze statues of his grandfather, the real Nandamuri Taraka Rama Rao, the superstar-chief minister of yesteryears. The scion is resorting to mythologically gaudy costumes like his grandfather did years ago. But the buzz seems to be the debuting guy from Chiranjeevi’s clan, the current first family of Telugu cinema. I bring back my eyes to the ground, for fear of stepping over excrement.
Frail men doze off on their cycle rickshaws under the shade near the canal. They will soon rejoin the great Indian Endurance Show, transporting people across the city. Round the corner, a woman and her child squat by the stinking sewage canal. They are busy sifting through the dark slime, as if it is gold sand. They find a screw or something and put it in a small sack comprising reusable metal and plastic objects.
Before I board the train to Kochi, another confrontation in front of Apsara Theatre, where the new blockbuster has just been released. A stout young woman chases a cycle-rickshaw rider. She beats him with a stick. The rider tries to shout her down but is too scared to stop. She wouldn’t let him go and mercilessly beats him as a cop looks on. When she returns, she tells the onlookers that the man was sponging on her and her friends running a makeshift tea stall near the theatre. After all, it’s the land of Durga.
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Savitha
non-member comment
loved the line "The shore knows all about the route from the memoirs of the river"