Rajeev Kejriwal

I had seen photographs of Kailash before I saw Kailash. None had prepared me for the silence. It was not the silence of an empty landscape, but one that seemed to possess a presence of its own. The journey from Kolkata through Kathmandu, Timure, Gyirong and Saga, across the Nepal-China border and the immense Tibetan plateau, gradually carried me away from the familiar world. Then came altitude, the thin air, disturbed sleep, exhaustion and the slow discipline of acclimatisation. At times, the...

Nations are often judged by the monuments they build, the highways they inaugurate or the skylines they proudly showcase. Yet history has a quieter benchmark. It asks a far simpler question: Could every citizen drink clean water without anxiety? Everything else is secondary. Civilizations have risen beside rivers and disappeared because they failed to manage them. Water has never been merely a resource. It is the first condition of life, health, productivity and dignity. A nation may postpone...

Every civilization has a sound. We hear it every day. Perhaps that is why we have forgotten to listen. Some announce themselves with the clang of industry, the whistle of trains, the restless murmur of cities that never seem to sleep. Some are remembered through the songs they sang or the monuments they left behind. Yet beneath every anthem composed by human hands flows an older music that is quieter, gentler, eternal. It is the music of water. It begins as rain, knocking softly upon...