Sir M. Visvesvaraya

Told in English, Telugu.

On a bright September morning, Tatayya packed a tiffin of pulihora and a flask of tea, and took Sravya and Kiran to Gandipet. The lake lay wide and silver under the sky, so still that the clouds seemed to be sleeping on it.

Kiran threw a small stone and watched the ripples spread. "Tatayya, why did we come here today? It isn't a holiday."

Tatayya smiled and sat down on the stone steps. "Ah, but it is a special day. Today is the fifteenth of September. All over India, engineers celebrate this day as Engineers' Day. And this very lake has a lot to do with the man whose birthday it is. Come, sit. Let me tell you about him."

The children settled on either side of him, and Tatayya began.

"A long time ago, in the year 1861, a baby boy was born in a small village called Muddenahalli, in what was then the kingdom of Mysore. His name was Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya. Do you hear that first name, Mokshagundam? That was his family name, and it came from a village in Andhra, where his family's roots were. So you could say a little bit of him belongs to us Telugu people too."

"His father, Srinivasa Sastry, was a learned scholar of Sanskrit and a healer who knew Ayurveda. His mother, Venkatalakshamma, was a strong and gentle woman. They were not rich, but their home was full of books and good values."

Tatayya's voice grew softer. "When Visvesvaraya was still a young boy, his father passed away. It was a very hard time. His mother had to care for the family with very little money. Now, many children in his place might have given up their studies. But this boy loved learning too much to stop."

"So what did he do?" asked Sravya.

"He found a way. He became a teacher, even though he was still a student himself! He taught younger children their lessons, and with the small money he earned, he paid for his own books and schooling. Imagine coming home tired after your own classes, and then sitting with another child to help with sums. He did that, day after day."

Kiran frowned thoughtfully. "I get tired after just my homework."

Tatayya laughed. "We all do, kanna. That is what made him special. He studied at Central College in Bangalore, and then he went far away to Pune, to the College of Science, to learn civil engineering. That means learning how to build things that people need, like roads, bridges, canals and dams. And he finished at the very top of his class."

"After his studies, he joined the government's Public Works Department in the Bombay Presidency, as an assistant engineer. His first posting was at Nashik. There he worked on bringing water to towns and fields. He was careful, honest and very, very disciplined. People said you could set your watch by him, because he was never late."

"Now here is something clever he did. Near Pune there was a reservoir called Khadakwasla. In the rainy season, when the water rose too high, it was dangerous for the dam, and a lot of precious water simply went to waste. Visvesvaraya thought and thought about this. And he designed special gates for the dam, called automatic sluice gates."

"What does automatic mean here?" Sravya asked.

"It means the gates worked by themselves. When the water rose above a certain level, the gates would open on their own and let the extra water out safely. When the water went down again, they would close. No one had to run and turn a wheel in the middle of a stormy night. These gates kept the dam safe and also let it store more water than before. His gates were first fitted at Khadakwasla in 1903, and later they were used at other dams too, including a famous one in Mysore that I will tell you about soon."

Tatayya looked out at the lake. "Now we come to Hyderabad. In September of 1908, it rained and rained, much more than anyone expected. The Musi river, which flows through the city, swelled up into a great flood. The water rushed through the streets. Thousands of families lost their homes, and many people lost their lives. It was one of the saddest times in the city's history."

The children were quiet. Kiran moved a little closer to Tatayya.

"After such a sorrow, people asked one question. How can we make sure this never happens again? The Nizam's government invited Visvesvaraya to help. He studied the river carefully, walked the land, measured, calculated. And he made a plan. He said, let us build two great reservoirs upstream, on the Musi and on its partner stream, the Esi. When heavy rain comes, these reservoirs will catch the water and hold it, so it does not crash down upon the city. And in dry months, that same water can be given to the people to drink."

Sravya's eyes went wide. She looked at the lake in front of them. "Tatayya, is this one of them?"

"Yes, my dear. This lake we are sitting beside is Osman Sagar, which we all call Gandipet. Its sister lake, nearby, is Himayat Sagar. They were built following his plan. For many, many years, the people of Hyderabad drank water from these very lakes. A terrible flood became the reason for a gift that lasted for generations."

Kiran whispered, "So he turned something bad into something good."

"Exactly," said Tatayya.

"Soon after that, the Maharaja of Mysore asked Visvesvaraya to come home, first as Chief Engineer, and then, in 1912, as the Diwan. That is like the chief minister of the whole kingdom. Can you imagine? The boy who once taught small children to pay for his books was now looking after an entire state."

"And he worked even harder. He began building a huge dam across the Kaveri river, called Krishna Raja Sagara. Its waters helped farmers grow crops on land that had been thirsty for years. He started a university in Mysore, so that young people would not have to travel far to study. He started an engineering college in Bangalore, a bank, a soap factory, and an iron and steel works at Bhadravati. He believed that education and industry would help people stand on their own feet."

"In 1915, the British government honoured him with a knighthood, and from then on he was called Sir M. Visvesvaraya. Many years later, in 1955, India gave him the Bharat Ratna, our country's highest civilian award."

"How long did he live?" asked Sravya.

"He lived for a hundred years! And people say he stayed neat, disciplined and curious right till the end. He kept reading, kept thinking, kept caring about the country."

Tatayya poured tea from the flask and handed the children their pulihora. For a while, they ate in silence, watching a pair of birds skim across the water.

Then Kiran said slowly, "Tatayya, when he was small and his father died, he must have felt very sad and scared."

"I am sure he did," said Tatayya gently. "Feeling sad is part of life. But he chose what to do with that feeling. He chose to study, to work, to help. Every choice he made added up, one by one, like drops of rain filling a lake."

Sravya looked at the shining water. "Like this lake."

"Like this lake," Tatayya agreed. "So, children, the next time you turn on a tap and clean water comes out, will you remember the boy from Muddenahalli?"

Both children nodded. And as they walked back along the shore, Kiran picked up one more stone, but this time he did not throw it. He held it in his hand all the way home, as if it were a small piece of a big promise.