By Narayan Prasad Mishra 

Rivers, lakes, and ponds are pleasant and beautiful. They are enjoyable for us even to watch. Though we do not have lakes and big rivers, we have some ponds and a few small rivers in Kathmandu Valley. Rivers and our life and culture are inseparably related and interlinked. We do most of our rituals from birth to death on the river banks. The majority of our people do their funerals on the river bank. River bath makes us holy and pure in our culture. We consider the river synonymous with God Narayan, the one among our Trinity, the preserver of the universe. So say Hari, Narayan when we touch the river water. I happened to buy land very close to the Balkhu and Bagamati rivers on the way to Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, where I, with my beloved wife Shanti Mishra, worked for the nation with complete dedication and devotion. The house we built is 90 meters from the Bagamati River and 40 meters from the Balkhu River. We see River Balkhu in the west and River Bagamati in the east. I remember the days the people who came to work for my house construction expressed their feeling seeing the holy rivers east and west at a glance what a lucky couple we were to see God Narayan when we opened our eyes after our whole night sleep. We also felt we were so fortunate to have that beautiful view of holy rivers with the view of snow peaks in the north. Clean Holy River Bagmati in 1968: Source - Betty Woodsend, Nepal lover The area was beautiful, and the rivers were clean. There was no running water supply in that area when we moved in 1975. The local people still used those river water even for drinking though we created a deep well. Our daughter, with her local friends, went and played in the Bagamati and Balkhu river water. I remember the day my daughter Pragya, a small child of 3/4 years, expressed her joy and happiness seeing the beauty of Bagmati river on full moon day and the reflection of the shining soothing, charming, beautiful moon on the river water. I remember when I took my daughter Pragya and her friends, including Jyoti Bhattarai, the well-known medical doctor in our country these days, to enjoy a picnic and play in the Balkhu river when they were in the elementary class in St. Mary's High School. My daughter Pragya, a well-appreciated medical doctor in Indiana, USA, and Dr. Jyoti Bhattarai, always enjoy remembering that day with the clean Balkhu river. But it became like a dream now. The rivers not only the Balkhu and Bagamati rivers all other rivers - Hanumante, Khasangkhusung rivers of Bhaktapur, the border river Manohara between Bhaktapur, Kathmandu, and Patan, Bisnumati and Dhobikhola of Kathmandu, and Nakhu Khola of Patan turned to the unholy dirty sewage. The area of the riverside became the most unpleasant polluted unbearable bad smell rancid place. We all know no one, no low or high-rank officials, and the political leaders are not unaware of the following reasons because of which the holy rivers became the dirty sewages. The two major political parties - Nepali Congress Party and Nepal Communist Party (UML) have their main offices on the banks of the Bagmati and Balkhu rivers. Rivers were and are made sewage dumping sites by the municipalities since the time of Mayor Sthapit, and it is continuing. Instead of educating and encouraging people to have a septic tank in their houses and compound, the ministries, departments, government, and semi-government offices, municipalities, NGOs, and INGOs have made and taken sewage lines to the rivers. More than that, the politicians have been encouraging people to occupy riverbank land in the name of landless squatters and settle with making houses. So all are attracted to it. Even the wealthy taxi owners who have homes and land in other places occupied the river bank and lived there with motorcycles and motor cars. They are making rivers, their toilets, and garbages. The political parties who came to the government always tried to close their eyes to take the necessary steps to remove these encroachers from the site as if that was not their responsibility. To some point, even if some Prime Ministers or the ministers gave attention to it and took the bold step, the irresponsible opposition parties opposed it and supported the encroachers and made the task difficult. I experienced it during Baburam Bhattarai’s prime ministership. But the government never showed their strength, courage, and decisive step to eliminating this problem. We often see they showed their strength and power to negotiate with contractors for business deals to make money, not giving any attention to the opposition's voice. They showed their interest in constructing retaining walls, unnecessarily spending millions of rupees in the river preservation project, and narrowed the river flow to encourage the encroachers. In this context, it would not be unwise and unreasonable to criticize the Bagmati Clean Campaign NGOs and INGOs, Bagmati lovers, and activists who worked every Saturday or other days and months picking the plastics and garbage with attractive dresses and gloves and not raising their loud voices for the points mentioned above. I, the sufferer of polluted Bagmati, always honestly think about how the rivers could be clean, picking little garbage without thinking about the root causes of making them polluted. That is a mockery of becoming a social worker. Remember we (my wife and me) went to see Mayor Keshav Sthapit in his Teku office many times to request that he arrest and punish the people who came to throw their industrial garbage with a van in the Bagmati River seen from my window. He kindly introduced staff and gave the telephone number to be informed. We watched it, told them, and got the garbage thrower punished. Later on, he dumped the garbage when he said he could not have another place for this purpose. From then on, we lost our hope to clean our river. In the same way, I remember the local people committee came to us to contribute some funds for fixing garbage pipe to the river getting 60 percent from the Nepal Water and Sewage Office. We objected to it and requested them not to pollute the river. We told them the vegetable washed in the polluted river would come to your mouth. It means the garbage you throw in the river would come to your mouth. They did not care about our request and fixed it and considered us anti-social. They boycotted us from the community. For all these reasons, the riverside people live in an intolerable atmosphere facing difficulties for breathing from time to time with lousy stint when mostly the rivers have less water and are dry. People are doing their holy rituals in the garbage in the name of the sacred river. Our city looks so ugly with settlers, and the foreign tourists think we are backward, dirty, and uncivilized, living like pigs and animals. But our influential people have no shame, eye, and plan to get rid of it. I remember the Kathmandu City Development office under the command of the superintendent of police bulldozed our houses and compound for broadening the roads a few years ago, which we owned. But they did not dare to touch the encroachers of river banks. If the encroachers were asked to go to their villages to get the land free of cost and settle, I am sure they would not go even if they were landless. They have their eye on Kathmandu's ground with the support of political parties. I know most of them are not landless as stamped and owned the land and house in their districts. Picture of Bagmati flood facing south from the Bagmati bridge at Balkhu on September 6, 2021. The river occupied and showed us its boundary.  I witnessed that in the Bagamati I saw when I bought the land in 1969 and moved there in 1975. I think rivers are also like living creatures. They show us their boundary and possession from time to time with a giant flood. On September 6, 2021, once again, our river showed its boundaries in Kathmandu Valley. I want our government and all political parties to return the encroached river land to the rivers they showed us this year and create holy rivers with immediate plans and programs, not just with formality sake campaigns with Haha and Hoohoo like merrymaking.  narayanshati70@gmail.com