Memories of Childhood ; Building of a dam

[FONT=&quot]My grandfather had been the Headmaster of the Government school in the town of Hospet, in the northern part of our state, Karnataka. My father grew up there, his elder sister and family lived there until recently. Going there for vacations had been a part of our childhood. Going to and walking across the Tungabhadra dam , a must visit, for every vacation . My children too enjoyed it but now fro the past many years tourists are not allowed to walk across the dam.
My father saw the building of this dam and he writes,[/FONT]


This is to introduce the Tungabhadra Dam
which had a great influence on my childhood.

Tungabhadra is a major river of
Karnataka. Two rivers, Tunga and Bhadra rise
in the Western Ghats and join each other north
of Shimoga to form the Tungabhadra. It then
flows past Hospet and Hampi and joins the
Krishna in Andhra. At the time of British
rule in India, Raichur District, north of the
river, was ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad and
Bellary District to the south by the British
Governor of Madras Presidency.

The two rulers decided to build a
dam across the river near Hospet.The foundation
stone on the south side was laid by the Governor
of Madras Presidency, Sir Arthur Hope. After
that, he spoke to a selected audience about the
dam in a cinema Theater in Hospet. My father
translated his speech into Kannada.

The dam is built of stone masonry. The
central portion, called spillway allows the
water to spill over it when the dam is full.
Cement mortar is used here. Lime mortar is
used for the rest of the dam. A few earth dams
fill the gaps on the north side. Shri Tirumale
Ayyangar was the great Chief Engineer at the
south side of the dam. His statue at the start
of the dam shows the gratitude of the people
to him. He went on to build the great Hirakud
dam in Odisha across the Mahanadi river.

For us, students in Hospet, the dam was
the centre of attraction. More than 50,000
workers worked there. The Hospet economy saw a tremendous change, which the businessmen, schools,medical practitioners, transporters never
dreamed of. I, with some friends visited the
dam site once or twice a month, to watch the
progress made. We saw the mixing of mortar,
blasting of a stone hillock on the river,
laying one stone over the other, building
of a tunnel in the centre of the dam to
control water-seepage and digging of canals.

On the southside, two great canals
were built. One was the low-level-canal
taking water to irrigate the land. The
other was the high-level-canal for filing
thousands of water-tanks built by the
great Viajayanagar kings 400 to 500 years ago.
The north-side canal was bigger giving water
to irrigate most of the Raichur District.
There were two hydro-electric power houses
on either side of the dam.

This dam has made Hospet very
prosperous. The dam and Hampi have brought
millions of tourists to Hospet from all
over the world.[FONT=&quot][/FONT] :thumbsup

These photos were taken more than 20 years ago.

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Thanks rgs, we had been after my father to share his memories of childhood and for a long time he did not agree, but now he has agreed and it is really nice reading about them and I asked him whether I could post them as blogs and he agreed.
Lakshmi