River Ravi returns to Lahore from India after four decades, reclaims lost land and hearts in Pakistan!

For the first time in four decades, the Ravi river has breached the international border, with the recent deluge in Indian Punjab State sending its waters gushing into Lahore in Pakistan, where it has reclaimed lost land and hearts.

- BY S VENKAT NARAYAN

Multiple social media accounts showed young Pakistanis flocking to a historic bridge in Lahore to see the “miraculous return” of the Ravi. The last time the river, considered the lifeline of Lahore in undivided Punjab, breached the international border was during the devastating 1988 Punjab floods.

While heavy monsoons or floods have, over the years, ensured that the Ravi’s flow into Pakistan was never cut off completely, the recent deluge saw nearly 30 km of the iron fencing along the India-Pakistan frontier getting washed away, leaving both sides of the international boundary flooded.

This monsoon that witnessed unprecedented rains, the river carried over 1.4 million cusecs of water, surpassing the 1988 record of 1.1 million cusecs, according to official data.

This time, Ravi's fury submerged several towns and cities on both sides of the border — from Gurdaspur and Pathankot on the Indian side to Narowal, Sahiwal, Kasur and Lahore in Pakistan. The flood waters even entered the Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Kartarpur in Pakistan’s Narowal district, flooding large parts of the historic shrine, Guru Nanak’s final resting place.

In Lahore, the Ravi inundated several residential settlements that had come up over the years on its riverbed and floodplains. Residents from areas like Shahdara, Shafiqabad and Farrukhabad, and high-end neighbourhoods such as Park View City Society, The Metro City and The Theme Park were among those evacuated.

Pakistan’s Ravi Urban Development Authority (RUDA) — tasked with leading a large-scale urban development and environmental restoration project along the Ravi’s riverbed and the surrounding floodplains in Lahore — has since declared all these residential societies “illegal.”