It Happened Along the Kaveri, a book by Padma Seshadri and Padma Malini Sundararaghavan, is a testament to the formidable research put in by these two authors. Ten years of reading, writing and travel have led to the creation of this marvellous book which combines the history, legends, mythology, religion, festivals, commerce, warfare and geography of the sacred river Kaveri. It talks about the great civilisations that rose and prospered along her banks, from the kings of Coorg, Tipu Sultan and Hyder Ali to the great Chola kings, and describes the architecture, music and other art forms that they nurtured.
I was fortunate to meet the impressive authors of this book at its release in the Raj Bhavan, Bengaluru, and mentioned to them that I wished I had had this book as my companion when I had done my own, four-month journey along the banks of this great river, because it is a wonderful read and full of fascinating detail. Padma Seshadri mentioned at the book release, “It is a book of travel, but not a travelogue. We are not people who go in the in gate and out the out, we zigzag our way down the Kaveri through geographic space and historic time.” The book is a treasure trove of anecdotal myths, legends and histories written in chatty prose. The immediacy of the conversational style of narrative weaves a collection of stories with humorous asides like when they found a collection of terracotta pigs in a temple courtyard in Coorg: “Perhaps they are here because the Kodavas like pork.” But it is also a comprehensive record of the history of this great riverine civilisation.
There is an important afterword to the book which deals with the present condition of the river. “We see her as a gift of the gods, we deify and praise her and yet how do we treat her. Kaveri struggles to meet the sea.” They mention a series of newspaper articles which document the polluting of the Kaveri by paper, chemical, distilleries, tanneries and textile mills. Compounding this is the problem of irrigation which diminishes the river. The total length of the Kaveri is 802 kilometres but the combined length of the irrigation channels that divert from this river in the Thanjavur delta alone is 19,000 kilometres! “A river has to be free to survive and the river has to be free for the land to survive…should we allow the river to die like this?”