Row row row your boat…

In his early thirties, Ganesh Pandit is possibly the youngest resident of Loha Pul, the old Yamuna Bridge in New Delhi. He says young people from his community prefer to move out to more 'mainstream' jobs as swimming coaches and working in retail shops in neighbouring Chandni Chowk.

The Yamuna which passes through Delhi, is the longest tributary of the Ganga, and the second greatest (after the Ghaghara) in terms of volume.

Pandit organises photo shoots on the Yamuna and ferries people seeking to conduct rituals in the middle of the river. “Where science fails, faith works,” he explains. His father is a priest here and he and his two brothers, “learnt to swim in the Jamuna [Yamuna] as youngsters.” Pandit’s brothers work as lifeguards in five-star hotels.

The young man says people don't want to marry their daughter off to a boatman today as it's neither a lucrative nor respectable profession. He doesn’t understand, nor does he agree saying, “I earn 300-500 rupees a day ferrying people.” Pandit adds that also he earns a fair amount helping organise photo and video shoots on the river.

He has been ferrying passengers for over decade and laments the pollution in the river’s waters. The river only gets a cleaning in September after the monsoon waters flush out the filth, he says.

Just 22 kilometres (or barely 1.6 per cent) of the Yamuna flows through the National Capital Territory. But the wastes emptied into that little stretch account for close to 80 per cent of all pollution in the 1,376-kilometre river. Read: When Yamuna’s ‘dead fish will be fresher’