For a river that has sustained cities and sparked political disputes, the Kaveri is often spoken about in numbers: water levels, allocations, shortages and dam capacities. Rarely is it discussed through feeling or through language. But a new project by Science Gallery Bengaluru is attempting to shift that narrative.

Part of the gallery’s larger 'River Landscapes: A New Glossary' initiative, the upcoming trilingual glossary centred on the river Kaveri seeks to build an entirely new vocabulary around rivers and the worlds they sustain. Rather than approaching the Kaveri solely as a resource or site of conflict, the project invites people to think about it as a layered ecosystem shaped by ecology, culture, and politics. 

The idea emerged from a five-day trans-disciplinary workshop hosted by Science Gallery Bengaluru in February 2025, which brought together students, artists, researchers and community practitioners to collectively rethink fluvial landscapes, with special attention to the story of the Kaveri. Participants explored how rivers shape not only language, imagination and everyday life. Their responses,  spanning writing, photography, visual art and other media, form the foundation of the evolving glossary. 

What makes the project particularly compelling is its trilingual nature. By bringing together Kannada, Tamil and English, the glossary recognises that rivers are experienced differently depending on where you stand along their course and what language you inherit. The Kaveri flows through multiple linguistic, political and ecological worlds, originating in the hills of Kodagu in Karnataka before winding through Tamil Nadu and eventually reaching the Bay of Bengal. Kaveri has long held an extremely controversial place between these two regions of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, both trying to claim it as their own, but for millions, the river exists simultaneously as a goddess, an irrigation system, and an inheritance. 

Language, in this context, becomes political. The words used to describe rivers often reduce them to systems of extraction or management; terms associated with dams, scarcity, control and utility. The River Landscapes project instead becomes a space where there is a richer understanding of what a river means. One that could account for grief, kinship, biodiversity, displacement or even reverence. The initiative hopes to foreground rivers as mediators of culture and social life while acknowledging the many beings, human and non-human, that inhabit them. 

In a city like Bengaluru, where much of the drinking water comes from the Kaveri yet daily life often feels disconnected from the river itself, the project feels especially urgent. Rivers are easy to forget when hidden behind pipelines and policy debates. A glossary, unexpectedly, may become a way of remembering.

Read the glossary here.

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