Quiet flows the Yamuna but if you could listen to her hushed murmur, she would tell you a thousand tales of how Delhi was settled, destroyed and rebuilt and how Yamuna herself – once a sparklingly brilliant river – came to be so polluted. This lovely river, beloved of all the rulers of Delhi, rises from the mighty Himalayas (see The Land for details) and flows southward till it reaches Delhi via Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. From Delhi it meanders on to embrace India’s most sacred river, the Ganges. Hindus consider the confluence point of the two rivers, Prayag near Allahabad, a holy city. (Check Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh for details.) The entire course of the river is about 1,376 km.

Till about 350 years ago, when Shahjahanabad (see > History for details) was built, Yamuna followed a different course. It skirted the walls of the awesome Red Fort (see Sightseeing for details) surging happily into its moats to keep enemies away. Now the river is over one km to the east of the fort and the moat remains sadly empty. It seems as if the river wanted nothing to do with Delhi once the curtain fell on its Mughal patrons (see History for details).

The water of the river has been diverted to many canals to facilitate irrigation. The Eastern and Western Yamuna canals are fed from the river along the Uttar Pradesh-Haryana border and the Agra Canal is made richer at Delhi. Near Mathura the river turns southeastward and passes Agra, Firozabad and Etawah. Below Etawah it receives a number of southern tributaries, the largest of which are the Chambal, the Sindh, the Betwa, and the Ken. If you visit the Taj Mahal (see Agra in Uttar Pradesh for details) in summer you’ll find the majestic Yamuna reduced to a mere trickle thanks to the amount of water siphoned of to the canals.

In fact this is the major factor that has led to the large-scale pollution of the Yamuna. According to environmentalist Iqbal Malik, "All rivers are capable of healing themselves but only if they have the minimum required water flowing in them, The Yamuna has a flow of just five cusec whereas the minimum requirement is 353 cusec. When the flow is weak, algae, shrubs and other water plants that cure the river die. Today, what we have in the Yamuna are catfish which are found only in sewers, red worms which inhabit only filthy water and disease-causing bacteria." Apart from this, the floating population of the river also consists of fly-ash, plastic, hospital waste and parts of half-burnt bodies from Nigam Bodh Ghat (Delhi’s biggest cremation ground).

But all is not lost yet. Chances of rescuing the river are bright – other water systems around the world have been revived under worse conditions.

10 cumec (cubic meter per second) of water to be released into the river. This is an order that has come straight from the Supreme Court and is not strictly a part of the Yamuna Action Plan. and neither is it as simple as it sounds. The estimated cost of this exercise alone is Rs 20,000 crore.

Blocking the sewage water flowing into the river, treating it and then releasing it into the Agra Canal for irrigation. In exchange the Yamuna would get 10 cumec of bathing-quality fresh water from Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.