Today, many rivers do not reach their mouths. The upstream states are the haves, and their intent is to monopolize, not to share. The ones closest to its mouth get the remnants or, often, nothing at all – because the middle riparian countries do unto the lower ones what the upper riparian does unto the middle. When a river flows through multiple countries, the ones upstream have first pick of the waters.
![when the river runs dry when the river runs dry](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zFQfrlxChKg/maxresdefault.jpg)
The little boy walking across the river is a vivid metaphor for the curse of the lower riparian state. I would think of Kona Ram’s jumping fish that once were as I’d watch a four-year-old boy walking across the river, without ever getting his knee wet. Here, once upon a time, boats plied busily up and down into what is now India. It was formidable, Kona Ram recalled it brimmed with life, with fish.Ī few days later we would stand on the banks of the Teesta near Parulia, a point slightly upstream from Kona Ram’s village. Two kilometers across and coursing in three deep-braided channels, it sustained 21 million fishermen and farmers in its floodplains. Then, the mighty Teesta, one of the largest tributaries of the Brahmaputra at this stage of its journey to the Bay of Bengal, was a force. As Kona Ram talks of that time his hands leap about in animated mimicry of the millions of fish that once were abundant. The two had grown up alongside these waters, catching fish since they were five. There are 24 dasparas in this section of the river they house Kona Ram and his friend Sivaram Das and 26,000 other hungry fishermen and their families. His daspara, a generic name for a fishermen’s village, hugs the banks of the Teesta in Bangladesh.
![when the river runs dry when the river runs dry](http://assets.allenandunwin.com.s3.amazonaws.com/images/original/9781846276484.jpg)
If his god Gobind wills, they will eat rice, lentils, and potatoes tonight. He squats on his haunches, hugging himself. He is running on empty. He had scraped a pot of plain rice clean at breakfast, and now his family of four has nothing for lunch or dinner. Kona Ram Das is 90 years old and still taut, sinewy, erect.