Photo artist Pa Madhavan can live anywhere. Last weekend, he emerged unscathed (a few kilos lighter maybe, but otherwise unharmed) from 72 hours of fasting on the Ethiraj Salai-side of the Cooum riverbank. With a plywood board for a bed, a few plastic sheets to keep the mid-day sun out and cans of water to keep him hydrated, he was at home and free to commune with the river he loves.
“Every few years, I look for a new landscape,” he says, when I meet him on the second day of his fast. He was initially in Ooty, before he moved to Goa, and he has now come to Chennai to explore the Cooum. In 2011, attracted to Gandhian philosophy, he and a group of fellow-artists covered the Dandi March route on foot, to experience the river/water ethos of the country. It brought him this July to the Kosasthalai river, the starting point of the Cooum, to trace its flow through Chennai. “Twenty people walked those 72 kilometres with me. The river’s journey is a revelation.”
It is well-recorded. The Cooum (Triplicane/Poonamallee) river is said to spring from a well or “coopam” in a village called Cooum in Tiruvallur district, about 70 kilometres from Chennai.
“There’s a temple in the village, whose Shiva deity is called Cooum.” The big tank in the village gets water from the old Bangaru Channel. To mark the main course of the river, you need to be in Sattarai village, around 65 kilometres north of Chennai.
I’m fighting to keep my lunch down in the overwhelming stench from the water-body, but Madhavan has no such problem. He hasn’t eaten for a day and is smiling. “There is a before-after story here,” he says.
“In the first few kilometres, the mostly dry bed {in July} sees plenty of activities on the banks.” The water is used for irrigation, drinking and bathing. The moment it reaches Avadi, you’ll notice tankers unloading sewage in full public view. “People react to the river differently. At the starting point, people live facing the river, walk to it, but once in Chennai, people move away holding their nose. This is a perfect example of how a natural resource is degraded.”
The river is beautiful, he says. “Do you see the butterflies?” he asks. He is right; I see scores flitting above the lush leaves and flowers of Alternanthera sessilis that forms a bed all over the bank. At 5 a.m., there’s no stench, as evaporation hasn’t begun. That’s when the water and the rising sun make the riverscape ethereal. “See that bend in the river flanked by green vegetation? The boat-docking structure across? The shacks that sell meat? That’s how the river speaks, and I stand in solidarity: ‘I am here, I am the Cooum’.”
Old-timers in the area have memories of a clean Cooum, he says. Some 40-50 years ago, people swam in the waters, caught fish and used boat services. It is human sewage that pollutes the river; no factory discharges waste into it. Cap all discharge pipes, run the water through recycling plants before letting it out. “Why should the Cooum be an open toilet? People should take ownership of the river. We need to work with the Government.”
He rues the fact that the Young Indians-CII-proposed Cooum Art Festival to be held on the riverbank couldn’t take place. It was to be an affair with participation of artists from 22 countries to bring focus to the Cooum. But Chennai got flooded, priorities changed. “I am confident it will happen; water will be a huge issue in the future,” he says. He cites Rajendra Kumar’s success in water conservation in Alwar, as an example of “what ordinary people can achieve”.
He snaps me with his pinhole camera, made with a matchbox and a piece of tin-sheet torn off a beverage can. The fast, he says, is a self-purification exercise. “It has a purpose; it’s for awareness and conservation. I am documenting the surroundings and the people who visit me; will take it further. An artist has more responsibility in bringing out issues. He can create images — positive and negative — for public consumption.”
