Dehradun was in the news this week—A heavy rainfall-induced flood in the rivers left the Doon Valley scarred on September 16, 2025.
Having spent my childhood in Dehradun, I can say with certainty that this is the first time that heavy rainfall-induced floods in the rivers of the city have wrought havoc on it.
But old timers will not remember Dehradun for this reason. Indeed, today’s Dehradun is not the sleepy, quaint little town called ‘Dehra’ of old.
That ‘town’ (not the ‘city’ of today) was an entirely different world. Let me recount.
“Dehra was always a good place for trees. The Valley soil is very fertile, the rainfall fairly heavy; almost everything grows there, if given the chance.”
That is how the famous author Ruskin Bond, who spent his childhood in Dehradun, described the settlement in his book, Our Trees Still Grow in Dehra.
I grew up in this very same Valley, known as ‘Doon’, which was known for its fragrant ‘Basmati’.
Dehradun had the reputation of a ‘city of grey hair and green hedges’, where every bungalow, in more idyllic times, ‘has a garden in front, an orchard at the back and a hedge wrapped around it’. It was not long ago that there were no cemented boundary walls but only hedges. Wild roses weaved, just like a wreath made the doorway entrance.
Long ago, birdsong echoed in the Doon Valley. There was so little traffic in the town that the sound of horns could be heard from a distance, and we children would switch off the television and go to study or sleep before our father came.
The late Anil Agarwal, founder-editor of Down To Earth, recorded the sound of frog croaks. He often said while he stayed with us that these sounds will be lost in the coming years.
What I also remember is the way water featured in the story of Dehra. September 16 may have brought watery havoc to the town. But there was a time when water and Dehra had a gentler relationship.
The rivers Rispana and Bindal, which flow through the city, flew uninterrupted in their natural course. From my childhood memory, I recall women in the evening sell the fresh catch from the river, and mungri (corn) grown in the fields irrigated by the river.
Doon once had a perennial network of canals built by the British. The canals were laid by Captain Proby Thomas Cautley (credited for building the Ganges canal). They were covered and made underground and were a landmark feature of the Doon Valley.
In the year 1900, there were approximately 83 miles of canals in Doon.
The water in these canals was mostly used for drinking and irrigation. That is how localities such as the East Canal (EC) Road and Canal Road got their names. Even today, water from the Bandal is lifted and supplied to Dehradun through this underground water system.
In 2003, I used to travel for higher education to Chandigarh via Paonta Sahib (across the Yamuna) on the Himachal border through the Selaqui neighbourhood of town. From the bus window, I would count every creek in the area along the way, as these creeks often carried heavy water, often sweeping buses, cars, and people away. All this water would end up in the Yamuna. Some academic institutes have their campuses here. The water innundated a campus recently.
Dehradun also had a unique rainfall pattern.
It rained around 3 pm throughout the year. The rain spells would last not just for an hour or a day but were a continuous phenomenon. In local parlance, continuous rain was called Jhadi, which was classified by the number of days it rained. I remember my mother drying our school uniforms in front of the heater. Because the city had more wet days, almost every other house complained of seepage.
Historically, the Rajpur area towards the Mussoorie hills always got excess rain.
It would rain on one side of the road but wouldn’t on the other side. As a child, I remember getting soaked in the rain mid-way from the main gate to my classroom. We always carried an umbrella or wore a raincoat.
The winters were harsh too. I remember wearing a hand-knitted half sweater under two layers of warmers. Only during the peak summer was a fan needed. I was always cold, and my siblings would laugh when I reduced the fan speed to one or switch it off.
Dehradun had a pleasant weather otherwise. By the time it was Diwali (around October), it was winter time. Upto mid April or so, winters were harsh. We could see snow-capped Mussoorie clearly without obstruction of buildings or the haze now. Such a view of snowclad mountains was visible last during the nationwide lockdown in 2020. The wintertime has shortened.
These are, of course, memories of long ago. The Dehradun of my childhood has changed and is changing rapidly. In about three decades (between 1989 and 2025), Dehradun, which was once a quaint small town has become a bustling city.
After becoming the capital of Uttarakhand, the town has expanded exponentially. And this urban sprawl has faded the old-world charm of the town, now a city.
When Dehradun became the capital of Uttarakhand in 2000, within a few years people from nearby big cities wanted to settle here — the government identified industrial areas in Selaqui and Mohabbewala to promote investment in industry. Both these areas were severely flooded this monsoon, as the rivers and seasonal torrents reclaimed their territory.
Gradually, tall rise buildings, residential and commercial complexes mushroomed in and around the city, with its water bodies, forests, and agricultural fields encroached upon by land sharks. According to a land use and land cover (LULC) study, between 2003 and 2017, a sudden rise in built up area was seen, especially in the watershed area of the Rispana. The authors of this study published in 2022 reported maximum conversion in the wards of Rajeev Nagar, Defence Colony, and Deep Nagar. Besides, small forest patches in the Sahastradhara region of the city (which has been severely affected this year due to flood), were converted to urban areas. Numerous residential societies were built in this region.
The consequences are there for all to see. Birdsong has been replaced by loud blaring horns. Real estate has slowly replaced the rice fields. With lost fields, the sound of frogs and cicadas are not heard in the city.
But it is Dehradun’s relationship with water that has worsened the most.
Over the years, the rainfall pattern in the city has changed. Now, it is intense but for a shorter duration. It doesn’t rain like it used to in the early 1990s or a few years after the town became the capital city.
Today, the rivers of Dehra—the Bindal and the Rispana— are dying or already dead.
Till 2005-06, local milkmen used to supply fresh milk on their cycles, and we used to get white butter and paneer from the Army canteen. During this time, white butter and chaach (buttermilk) of the famous Verka (milk cooperative) in Chandigarh were quite new for me. Within a few years, Anchal, Madhusudan and other milk cooperatives were started in Uttarakhand. Today, empty milk packets are choking the rivers and drains of the city. Even Doon’s once perennial canals were covered because people began dumping garbage and animal waste in them.
Today, the Bindal river has shrunk in width, its course altered by cemented structures—a high rise ‘suraksha deewar’. The air around the river bears a fowl stench as it carries the city’s sewage and toxic waste, with a garbage dumping ground next to its bank.
The old Dehra, exuding the charm which Bond wrote about in his book, is now lost forever. It has been consigned to the pages of history, a paradise lost.
Megha Prakash is an independent journalist with over a decade of experience covering science, health and technology