Cauvery Basin: The mouth of river Cauvery at Poompuhar

By the time I reached Poompuhar a storm was approaching. The wind whipped the rain in circles and churned the sea into froth above the submerged ancient city. I pushed my way through the blustery weather, along the black sand, searching for the mouth of the Cauvery.There was nothing left of the once great port where the Cholas had traded with Rome and then I found the pitiful little stream that was the Cauvery.

Looking back out into rough surf of the Bay of Bengal I could see how Atti the lover of the Chola princess Adimandi could have been dragged away by the tides. I could not see this brook as the great Cauvery, the Ganga of the south. This could not be the beautiful mythical girl given by Brahma to the childless king Kaveran, the woman who went on to marry Sage Agastya. The wife whom he promised he wouldn't leave alone, and then teaching a difficult philosophy lesson to his disciples, he forgot and did. Cauvery, convinced something had happened to him, threw herself into a tank to drown but miraculously sank to the bottom, went underground and became the river Cauvery.Sage Agastya searched for her and eventually recognised Cauvery in the spring at the Brahmagiri Mountains and she agreed to return to him, but half of her, she said, would always remain as the river Cauvery to enrich mother earth.
On the opposite bank of the tiny river I saw a burning burial pyre. Smoke and flames, lashed by the wind, rose and fell against the dark sky protesting at death and I realised it was my own feelings that tempered my view of the river. Cauvery had done what she promised, giving and sustaining life across two states, and now she was free to rest in the arms of the sea.