My friend Mr Vasu was infamous in his circle of friends. Many were afraid of him as he used to pick up quarrel at the slightest provocation. Surprisingly, we got along well. The Musi river, the lifeline of the city flows South of my home at a distance of one and a half kilometers. Walking on the banks of the river was fun especially during the summers. The fields were irrigated from two parallel irrigation canals upstream, these canals carried sewage from the urban areas. The Para grass was cultivated with the drainage water and in the waterlogged areas. The fresh grass was used as fodder for buffaloes, which give a good yield of milk and people liked the buffalo milk. In those days people preferred to buy fresh milk. While we walked in this area, we would come across many people from the Ramanthapur village, cutting the grass and loading it on their bullock carts. The place looked serene with green grass all around. Watching the sunset from these grasslands was always beautiful. Waterbirds especially the egrets which were white in colour visited the place in large numbers and looked very beautiful in the background of dark green colour grass. I used to wonder how in spite of being in the slushy and dirty fields they were always so white. The sounds of the chirping birds and the cool evenings made the whole place even more beautiful. Close to the river bank, there were many fruit bearing trees including, such as Cheema Chintakaya that is Sp. Pithecellobium dulce, it provided cool shade and the innumerable fruits. Once during our visits we felt thirsty, the villagers directed us to go to a spring and have water. It was very close to the river, yet the water was refreshing, cool and sweet. Initially, we were hesitant to drink as the polluted water after flowing at a distance of 400 meters filtered through the grass and the soil, it resurfaced as spring here. Nature has its own treatment systems with which it cleans the pollution, but nature has limitations too.

Once with my friend challenged ourselves to walk all along the bank of the river, to a place called Nagole bridge. The total distance was about two kilometers. We did not knew the path but still kept on walking. On the way, we got into knee deep mud. The earthen bund’s separating the fields were narrow at some places, it was very difficult to balance and walk. As we were new to the place, we fell into the fields with grass and slushy mud. We made a mess of ourselves and the dirt stuck to our dress like dark grease. We watched the river in its natural splendour along with several water birds on the way. Finally, we managed to reach the Nagole bridge and we washed ourselves and the clothes with relatively clean water and left home. If I remember my adventure done at the age of ten year’s it was too risky, but for me worth a life long memory. This incident I never shared with my mother.