Dear Reader,

I am walking down the hillside to buy bread when I hear a roar.

It is the Manalsu river, named after the ancient sage Manu, the same sage Manali is named after. But today the river is different to anything I’ve ever seen before - gone are its icy green glacial waters. Instead it’s a roiling, broiling, seething sea of mud straining against its bank, rumbling with uneasy undertones.

“The river is angry”, says the man at the bakery. “The Manalsu doesn’t get angry, but this time things have gone too far.”

On my return home as I cross the bridge over the Manalsu, I look down again at the river and feel fear. I think back to a book about rivers that has been haunting me ever since I read it. The author, the famed naturalist Robert Macfarlane travels to three different continents to journey along the paths of different rivers. In India, in Chennai, he travels with the activist Yuvan Aves (also author of the amazing Intertidal) to seek out the rivers long buried under the concrete of cities. Macfarlane titles his book ‘Is a River Alive ?’

And yes, this river, the Manalsu, is not just alive, it is angry. It is burdened and out of its depth. Further downstream, less than a km away it will meet the river Beas, adding to its swollen waters. Deforestation and debris dumping by builders has hugely increased the silt in these........

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