Living at the banks of a dying river

This river is dead.

Its waters do not flow, no waves break the surface, no birds strike at the sky, just an inky soupiness in the inky blackness of this winter morning.

I cross the dead river’s waters in a boat rowed by a boy who’s been alive for less than half the time I have been.

There is no sound except the choppiness of the oars striking the dead river’s body.

A deep gurgling chop, slop, chop.

The boy makes me get off the boat on an island made of nothing.

There is no light.

Only my feet know there is land beneath, the eyes don’t believe.

The island is littered with remains of rituals and memories and desires and dreams.

All dead now, seeing the sky with never seeing eyes.

This river is alive.

As the sun pierces through the fog, the mist blanketing its waters starts to flow.

As if clouds descended to make do for the still waters below.

Some birds appear on the island’s banks, some exotic but mostly crows, foraging through the detritus of a civilized city.

I have walked to the edge of the island from where I see an old iron bridge, a vein throbbing in the body of the city.

Traffic flows through its lower level, trains pass through the upper one, carrying countless stories in their metallic bowels.

The iron bridge and its iron chaos is more alive than the river below.

I cross the river again, now surrounded by exotic birds everywhere that people have come to feed and photograph.

I reach the ghat where I began this journey, with more humans buzzing around than the birds.

Most of them are exotic, here for an hour or two, to feed on the dying beauty of a dying river, and then back to the nests of their daily lives.

But some of them are natives, just like the crows.

Remains of a city that has no use for them anymore, shadows of a time that will never come again, with their lives a mirror image of the river struggling to stay alive.

The river is dead, as much it is alive.

The river lives, as much as it dies.