…change, again

In June, I wrote about my trip to the vast land area laid waste by the backwaters of Gorur Dam, and of the church in ruins there. What I saw then was barren land awaiting fresh flooding from imminent monsoons. I was in Hassan this week and went again to the church, curious to see its state in the rains. The vast landscape I had seen is drowned. Then, I had walked to the ruins; yesterday I went there on a teppa. I sat on a dry part on the Southern wall, a tiny being, lost in mind and in body on this immensity of water. After a while I emerged from rumination and sat blank and thoughtless for a long time, only inhaling cool clean air.

Puttaswamy, who took me there, told me it took a month for water to rise to this week's level. But he doesn't know when it first happened, when the dam was built. He said that some weekends he takes a hundred people a day to the church, but yesterday, Saturday, he hadn't a single fare. I am annoyed with myself that I don't believe he ferries a hundred a day, on any day. Maybe I'm not to blame—it is such a desolate place.