River: A Boon or a Bane

Rivers are the back bone of human civilization. History says that various prominent civilizations like the Nile River valley, the Indus River valley, the Yellow River valley etc, formed around rivers. That is why every culture, civilization, folk and literature has a strong bonding to the rivers. In India, rivers are venerated as Goddesses. Indians worship River as a mother. Like a mother, each river has a pleasant (saumya) and an unpleasant (urga) forms. Considerably good amount of literature is available related to rivers explaining its beauty but only hand full of poets have seen the other side of the coin where it is devastating many lives. The objective of this paper is to focus on the two different versions of the river in literature.