Samrudhdi Kerkar
The river has always been close to my heart, since childhood. I would often walk down to the river behind our home with my grandmother.
While she remained immersed in washing clothes, my cousin and I would play endlessly. Sometimes catching tiny fish in a dupatta just for the joy of it, and then gently releasing them back. There was something deeply satisfying in watching them slip away, disappearing into the water. At times, we would sit with colourful pebbles, scratching them against a boulder and watching their faint hues dissolve into the current. It felt almost meditative.
There were swimming races with cousins in the backyard river. It always felt like a blessing to live in a place embraced by two rivers, Kalti and Valvonti, flowing on either side of our home. I would sit on a familiar boulder, feet dangling in the cool, tranquil water, and let the river caress them, slowly, gently, as if she knew how to cleanse not just the body, but the mind too. And at night, when the world quietened and the cacophony faded into stillness, I could hear her, the soft gurgle of the river from our balcony. It felt like a lullaby, one that did not need words.
Living alongside these rivers, my connection with water only deepened. Every summer, my father would take all of us cousins to places like Sonal and Uste, where the river revealed a different, almost divine facet of herself. The water sparkled on the surface like a playful child in sunlight. But beneath that beauty lay a quiet warning.
My father would always keep a watchful eye, reminding us to stay away from the eerie, deep green patches of water. But one day, I remember being drawn to a certain spot out of curiosity. I thought I could simply walk across. Within a moment, the ground beneath me vanished, and I slipped into a hidden depth.
The more I struggled to rise, the more the water seemed to pull me in. That day, the river I had always known as gentle and motherly revealed a different face, fierce, unfamiliar, almost unforgiving. Darkness surrounded me, and for a moment there was no sense of direction, no certainty of coming back up.
And then, just as suddenly, a hand reached me. It was my father. He pulled me out, back into breath, back into light. Even today, the memory of that moment, the helplessness, the silence beneath the surface, feels unreal. I had drowned in the Mhadei, but returned. Yet, strangely, my love for the river did not fade. It only changed, becoming quieter, and deeper.
Later, I joined swimming classes at the Sankhali swimming pool and learned the basic skill of swimming, so I could return to the river with better understanding and respect. I was lucky to receive a second chance from the mother river, something that not everyone gets. A study reveals that nearly three lakh people across the world lose their lives to drowning every year. Even here in Goa, within just the first few months of 2026, dozens of lives have been lost, many in inland waters, in rivers that appear calm, inviting, and safe.
Children, especially, are drawn to rivers. The water calls to them with the promise of joy. But without the knowledge of swimming, without understanding the river’s nature, that joy can quietly turn into tragedy. But more often than we admit, it is carelessness, the influence of alcohol, or a fleeting moment of overconfidence.
When many people drown at a particular spot, it is often closed off and spoken of as haunted. But the river is never haunted. It is we, as humans, who are not careful. When I hear such news now, it no longer feels distant. Because once, I too stood at that edge, between breath and stillness.
And I realised then, the river is not just something to love. It is something to understand, to respect, and to honour its boundaries.
