Quiet flows (?) the Manimala

The mighty Manimala river winds its way through the heart of our hometown, Mallappally.
When I was a child I remember going to the Manimala river in the evenings, to have a bath with my two brothers accompanied by an elder. The water was warm and inviting, in sharp contrast to the cool evenings. I remember the golden sand on the banks glistening in the rays of the sun setting for the day.
The spot where the local people preferred to bathe was on a bend where the river made a sharp turn on its short trip to the sea. Vehicles crossing the river on the suspension bridge spanning the Manimala, one of the oldest of its kind in Kerala, could be seen making their way to the next township, a short distance away.
A clear stream that collected water from the numerous springs on the hilly countryside converged with the Manimala at that very place and the cool stream water intermingled with the warm river water to make it an ideal place to have a dip.
As the women from the water deprived homes left for the day after washing their dirty linen, we were left to ourselves to bathe, wrapped in our tiny threadbare cotton towels. We didn't know how to swim so we were warned not to venture into the midstream where the water flowed a lot faster due to strong undercurrrents.
All that has unfortunately passed.
Today nobody goes to the river to have a bathe any longer. Some women folk still go to wash clothes but that is out of sheer necessity as the summer dries up the household water wells.
In the rainy season the water swells and wreaks havoc in the low lying areas as usual, but the water is a muddy red and unfit to bath. In the summer the river all but dries up. People have started treating the Manimala as one giant garbage dump. The various streams that feed the mighty river are polluted with garbage of all sorts right from excreta to electronic waste. All these get carried to the river and going there to bathe is akin to drowning in poison.
The golden sands that adorned the banks too are no longer there. It has simply vanished thanks to the intense sand mining by the sand mining mafia out to make a quick buck selling the sand for building purposes. The suspension bridge is no longer stable thanks to the sand mining. Its pillars are weak and have been strengthened with concrete struts.
My mind misses goes back nostalgically to those days when we used to make the short trip to the river for our weekly bath and prance around on its once golden banks in utter glee.