Sir Arthur Cotton and the Godavari

Told in English, Telugu.

It was the morning after Sankranti, and the air in Dowleswaram still smelled of sugarcane and burnt bhogi wood. Sravani, who was ten and lived in Hyderabad, was holding her Tatayya's hand as they walked along the great barrage over the Godavari. The river was so wide that the far bank looked like a thin green line.

On the way, they had passed a stone statue of a man in an old-fashioned coat. Someone had hung a fresh marigold garland around his neck.

"Tatayya," Sravani asked, "why do people put flowers on that statue? He doesn't look like one of our gods. He doesn't even look Telugu."

Tatayya smiled and sat down on a bench where they could watch the water. "That, Sravani, is Sir Arthur Cotton. In these villages, old farmers call him Cotton Dora. Some families even keep his picture in their homes. Shall I tell you why?"

Sravani nodded and pulled her shawl tighter.

"Then we must go back nearly two hundred years," said Tatayya. "Arthur Cotton was born in England in 1803. When he was still a teenager, he joined the army as an engineer and sailed all the way to India. He worked in the Madras Presidency, which in those days included our Andhra lands. His job was to build things. Bridges, roads, tanks, and most of all, ways to bring water to fields."

"So he was like a civil engineer?" asked Sravani.

"Exactly. Now listen. Long before Cotton came to the Godavari, he was sent to the south, to the Kaveri river in Tamil country. There he saw something that amazed him. Across the Kaveri stood a dam called the Grand Anicut, the Kallanai. It was built by a Chola king named Karikala, close to two thousand years ago. And it was built on sand!"

"On sand? Wouldn't it just fall over?"

"That is what everyone believed. You cannot build on a sandy riverbed, they said. But the old Chola builders had found a way. They laid great stones into the sand, and the stones settled and held. Cotton studied it carefully. He was a proud officer of a powerful empire, but he was humble enough to say, these ancient Indian builders knew something I did not. He learned from them, and he built anicuts on the Kaveri's branch, the Kollidam, using what he had learned."

A boat with a red sail drifted below them. Tatayya watched it for a moment before he went on.

"Now, the Godavari. Look how big she is, Sravani. She comes from far away in the west and travels across the Deccan until she reaches us. Here, near Rajahmundry, she spreads out into a delta before she meets the sea. You would think a land beside such a river would always have plenty of food. But it did not. In the rainy season, the river flooded and rushed past. In the dry months, the water sank low, and it could not reach the fields. The farmers depended on the rain, and when the rain failed, the crops failed."

His voice became softer. "Around 1832 and 1833, the rains failed badly in this coastal region. There was a terrible famine. It is often called the Guntur famine. Fields turned to dust. Many families had nothing to eat, and a great many people died. Many others left their villages to find food somewhere else. Your great-great-great-grandparents would have remembered those years for the rest of their lives."

Sravani was quiet. She looked at the green fields stretching beyond the river and tried to imagine them brown and empty.

"That makes me sad," she said.

"It is sad," said Tatayya gently. "And it is all right to feel that. But this story does not stay sad. Some years after the famine, in the 1840s, Arthur Cotton was sent to look at the Godavari district. He saw the poor villages. He saw a mighty river pouring its water into the sea while the land beside it went thirsty. And he made a choice. He decided he would not simply write a report and leave. He would fight to change it."

"Fight who?"

"Not with swords," laughed Tatayya. "With letters and plans and arguments. His idea was to build a long stone anicut right across the Godavari, here at Dowleswaram. The wall would raise the water level. Then canals could carry that water to fields all across the delta, all year round. But many officials doubted him. The river is too wide, they said. The floods are too fierce. The bed is all sand. It will cost too much money. Some thought he was a dreamer."

"But he had seen the Chola dam!" said Sravani.

"Yes! You understand him already. He knew a stone wall could stand on sand. And he believed, with his whole heart, that water for the farmers was worth every rupee. He kept writing, kept explaining, kept insisting. At last, the work was approved, and it began in 1847."

Tatayya pointed across the water. "Here the river is not one stream. It is split by islands into several branches. So the anicut had to be built in pieces, across each branch, joining island to island. And it could only be built in the dry months, when the water was low. When the floods came each year, the work had to stop, and everyone held their breath, hoping the new stones would survive."

"Who did all the building? Not just Arthur Cotton?"

Tatayya looked at her proudly. "That is the best question you have asked today. No, not just Cotton. Thousands of people from these very villages did the work. Masons cut and shaped the stone. Labourers carried loads on their heads in the hot sun. Boatmen ferried stone down the river. Carpenters, blacksmiths, women and men, all together. They were paid for their work, and many of them were from families who had lived through the famine. Imagine how it felt for them, building a wall that might mean their children would never go hungry like they had."

Sravani pictured it: hundreds of people along the riverbank, the clink of chisels, the shouts of boatmen.

"Was it easy for Cotton?"

"Not at all. The work was hard and the climate was harsh. At one point, Cotton fell seriously ill and had to go away for a time to recover. Other engineers carried the work forward while he was gone. Even a strong, determined person sometimes needs to rest and let others help. Then, in 1852, the anicut was complete. The great stone wall stretched across the Godavari."

"And did it work?"

Tatayya spread his arms toward the fields. "Look around you. Canals carried the water to village after village. Paddy grew where there had been dust. Sugarcane, coconut, banana. Within some years, the Godavari districts became one of the richest farming lands in all of India. People started calling this region the rice bowl. Many families who had once feared famine now had full granaries. Later, Cotton's ideas also helped bring an anicut across the Krishna at Bezawada, which we now call Vijayawada."

"So that's why people put flowers on his statue," Sravani said slowly.

"That is why. For the farmers of these districts, he was not just a foreign officer. He was the man who listened to the river and to the people, and refused to give up. Queen Victoria's government made him a knight, which is why we say Sir Arthur Cotton. He spent the rest of his life speaking about how important water and canals were for India. He lived to be very old and died in England in 1899. But his name lives here, by our river."

"Is this the same wall he built?"

"Clever girl. The old anicut served for more than a hundred years. Then a new, stronger barrage was built just beside it, and finished in 1982. And do you know what they named it? The Sir Arthur Cotton Barrage. The very one we are sitting on. There is even a museum nearby in his name. We can go after lunch."

Sravani looked down at the river. The water slid gently through the gates and flowed away toward the canals, toward the fields, toward someone's plate of warm rice tonight.

"Tatayya," she said, "I think the workers should have statues too."

Tatayya laughed and squeezed her hand. "You are right, kanna. And maybe the best statue for them is the rice in every home. Every time you eat a meal from the Godavari fields, you can remember them, and Cotton, and even the old Chola builders who taught him. Great things are almost never done by one person alone."

They sat together a while longer, the grandfather and the girl, listening to the river that had once brought hunger and now brought life. Can you picture it too? The wide water, the green fields, and a long line of people who chose to build something good together.