BHAREH, India – For centuries, it was a curse that saved the river.
It was a series of curses, actually – a centuries-long string of unrelenting bad news in this rugged, hidden corner of northern India’s industrial belt. There was an actual curse at first, a longheld belief that the Chambal River was unholy. There was the land itself, and the more earthly curse of its poor-quality soil. And above all, there were the bandits, hiding in the badlands and causing countless eruptions of violence and fear.
But instead of destroying the river, these things protected it by keeping the outside world away. The isolation created a sanctuary.
Today, tucked in a hidden corner of what is now a deeply polluted region, where the stench of industrial fumes fills the air in dozens of towns and tons of raw sewage is dumped every day into many rivers, the Chambal has remained essentially wild.
But if bad news saved the river, good news now threatens to destroy it. The modern world, it turns out, may be the most dangerous curse of all.
The fears that shaped this region go back more than a thousand years, to when sages said the Chambal (The term refers both to the river and the rugged land around it) had been cursed, and villagers whispered that it was unholy. In a culture where rivers have long been worshipped, farmers avoided planting along the river’s banks.
Only in the late 1990s did life in the Chambal begin to change significantly. Ancient dirt paths became paved roads, prying open villages that had been isolated for centuries.
Today, cellphone towers and motorcycle dealers and satellite TVs are everywhere. New businesses and new schools have opened, ushered in by years of Indian economic growth. Farmers struggling with the poor soil now have fertilizers and tractors.
The laborers, poor men who spend most of the year working on tiny farms, are concerned with making extra money, not with wildlife. And that is the biggest curse that the Chambal faces today: The path of progress, sometimes, leaves little room for anything else.
“What is a sanctuary?” says Gopal, the river laborer, his voice dripping with disdain. “What is a mammal? What is a bird? I don’t have time to worry about these things.”
