What happens when rain can no longer find the path it has followed for centuries? In Bengaluru, it floods roads instead of filling lakes.

Every monsoon, cars stall in waterlogged streets, homes flood, and the city slows after a few hours of heavy rain. Yet several lakes remain dry.

For retired Army officer Captain Santosh Kumar, the contradiction demanded an answer. If the city received enough rain to flood entire neighbourhoods, why was that water failing to reach its lakes?

The answer lay beneath roads, buildings and decades of urban expansion, inside Bengaluru’s forgotten network of Raja Kaluves. These ancient channels carried rainwater from one lake to another, protecting the city from floods while replenishing its water bodies.

Using British-era maps from 1923, Captain Santosh began tracing the waterways Bengaluru had buried.

Why Bengaluru’s rain stopped reaching its lakes

Captain Santosh retired from the Army in 2008 and returned to Muthanallur in Anekal Taluk, on Bengaluru’s outskirts.

His search first revealed that water was being illegally........

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