ABSTRACT
The opening of the Signature Bridge across the River Yamuna on 4 November 2018, connecting road traffic between East Delhi and the rest of the city, is the latest in a line of initiatives that have gradually and unobtrusively transformed the way the river is approached and imagined by city residents. From 2014, continuous and repeated field trips to the Yamuna Bazar Ghat, where the old city of Shahjahanabad fronted the river, helped to deepen understandings of the multiple layers of connections between the River and the City. Discovering an oral history of relationships with the river through resident’s memories and recollections, triggered partly by these research inquiries and visits by students or researchers, led to listening and learning and reflecting silently on the texture of a hitherto lesser known riverside life. The vast stretches of riverbed revealed in the summer months may lure developers, but the line between land and water is swiftly dissolved once the rains come.
