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`Come home... to take a last look at Tehri'

Low-lying areas are already under water; higher lands soon will be submerged

Photo: AP

THE TOWN THAT WAS: This photo taken in November 2005 shows Tehri town that will soon be submerged in Tehri Dam reservoir.

New Tehri UTTARANCHAL: Uttaranchal's renowned balladeer Narendra Singh Negi said it very poignantly in one of his songs. A frail old father writes to his soldier son. Translated, the verses read: "Come home this time on a long leave...for the last time...Tehri's sinking...for the dam."

As the Tehri dam takes shape, the reservoir at the confluence of the Bhagirathi and the Bhilgana rivers has grown from a small lake to the proportions of a sea, changing the history and the geography of the town.

Old Tehri is sinking by inches. The low-lying areas are already under water and the higher lands will soon be submerged.

Some ruins and a few withered trees stand as if lamenting the death of a vibrant city. The once-majestic palace at the summit of the town lies waste and the bell tower stands erect watching the decline.

There are no people and no animals. The only movements breaking the monotony of silence are of the engineers at work at the dam site and the rumbling of trucks that come and go.

A UNI correspondent who visited the old drowning town saw white markings showing where the waters of the Bhagirathi would rise to once the dam is complete. Swathes of land stretching to several kilometers will go under, taking with them many villages.

Many hamlets, now on the periphery of the lake and likely to be submerged in a month or two, are beginning to fall silent as people leave.

Rooftops of houses have caved in and the edge of the blue waters muddied with the rich soil of sinking fields and floating debris.

Incongruently, sticking out from the centre of the water that has already swallowed some of the town is a tree top and dome which had possibly roofed a temple or a mosque.

On either side of the road that leaves the town, houses, shops and pathways have a thick coating of cement and dust kicked up by the trucks. Their tracks, crater-like, are the only ones on the roads.

The government calls Tehri dam a milestone in its development programme. Its decades-long efforts will now come to fruition. It claims to have recompensed the old town's residents by relocating them in a brand new Tehri.

But there are still murmurs of discontent, of inadequate compensation and complaints on other counts.

It is yet to be seen how many megawatts of electricity will be generated by Asia's biggest hydroelectric project, how many hectares of land it will irrigate and to how many millions of households it will bring drinking water.

For now, the displaced of Old Tehri are nursing their hurt.

Poet Negi's old man is asking the soldier son to come home and see for the last time the roads, the fields of garlic and onion and the pastures he played in as a child; to visit the old house of his ancestors which will soon get a watery grave.

The song ends with a lament, asking the gods why they turned their backs to the plight of the villagers. It still brings tears to eyes of those uprooted from Old Tehri. -- UNI

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