Seema Mundoli still remembers the eight checkered keelbacks she saw while on a stroll with friends in Lal Bagh, sunning themselves near the lake there. “It was a stunning sight,” says Ms. Mundoli, at a recent event at Bookworm, Bengaluru where she and her co-author Harini Nagendra discussed their latest book, Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India’s Cities, a treatise on water.
“There is so much that city water-bodies offer, but we often tend to miss it,” points out Ms. Mundoli, who like Ms. Nagendra, teaches at the Azim Premji University, Sarjapur. “Water bodies in cities have a whole range of biodiversity, but we tend to ignore these species as we are so busy going about our daily lives.”
Seema Mundoli | Photo Credit: saraswathy nagarajan
Turtles of Ganga
At the event, Ms. Mundoli also read from her favourite chapter, one that involved the flesh-eating turtles of the Ganga. Back in the 1980s, as part of the Ganga Action Plan (GAP), the centre decided to release these turtles into a stretch of the Ganga at Varanasi, hoping that they would help depollute the river by feeding on the half-charred carcasses that clogged it. While it seemed to have been successful, at first, with nearly 40,000-odd animals being released into the river and even a turtle sanctuary being established here, it fizzled out as many turtles began disappearing, she read.
“One conjecture is that local people found the flesh of these flesh-eating turtles a delicacy and the meat made its way to dinner tables,” she says, adding that while the Wildlife Protection Act of 1972 protects all species of turtles by law, in the end, neither the law nor the creation of the sanctuary at the Varanasi was able to protect the turtles that had worked so hard to clean the Ganga.
A file photo of Hebbal Lake. | Photo Credit: BHAGYA PRAKASH K / THE HINDU
Themes of water
While understanding the biodiversity present in water bodies was certainly one of the most compelling parts of the conversation, there were many other ideas, themes, and perspectives that were also discussed, all centred around water. “It is a very difficult subject to write about,” says Ms. Mundoli, going on to talk about the format of the book, where chapters on water management in specific cities are interspersed with certain other aspects of water.
“Every third chapter is about the cities,” says Ms. Nagendra, listing out the seven places whose water situations are examined in this book: Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Udaipur, Guwahati and finally, Lakshadweep.
She also read from her own favourite chapter -- one devoted to the pundits or native Indian surveyors — and delved into some of the other themes covered in the 24-odd chapters of this book. These include chapters devoted to the origin and chemistry of water, inland water transport, antibiotic resistance, dams, music, and wars, even about cryptozoology or the study of animals, whose existence is disputed, like the Loch Ness monster.
The book discussion ended with an audience interaction, where questions about the research that went into this book, possible solutions to end water crises, the sponge city model, invasive species, and that eternal Bangalore question — what do you do about the city’s lakes? -- were addressed.
No universal solutions
What became very clear, by the end of the event, is that water management is highly complex with no apparent universal solution, since so many factors are at play here. For instance, in the case of Bengaluru, that oft-touted solution of simply restoring old waterways may not be enough, as Ms. Nagendra points out. “Our cities have changed their microtopography,” she says. “We have to think a bit differently about marrying the old and the new in a very strategic way.”
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