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A fourteen-hour train ride southwest of Delhi will take you to the industrial town of Bhopal. From there, take an overnight bus and you'll find yourself on the banks of the Narmada, a river whose ill-conceived damming has already condemned dozens of poor villages to drown under the swelling of its clearer waters. Two years ago I sat in a riverside village, listening to frightened and angry residents wonder what would become of them and their families when the river sunk their wood-and-concrete houses, washing away generations of hopes in a single, crushing torrent. That village is gone now, its residents scattered to an arid diaspora of poorly-irrigated farm tracts in Gujarat.

Meanwhile, Chennai has grown thirstier. Tamil Nadu's charmless and sprawling metropolis has found itself dry and searching for new water, and even the PVC barrels placed on rooftops across the city can't provide enough water to the hot coastal city. Up in Ladakh, India's craggy and cold roof sandwiched between Pakistan and China, the plastic bottles strewn aside by rushed tourists has clogged up the city's pipes, and the city's scarce water is growing ever more valuable. Lovers in Bombay sneaking out for an evening of balloons and bhelpuri on Chowpatty Beach know better than to dip their toes in the Arabian Sea's murky waters. And while the world touts India's very real successes, a billion thirsty people from Kashmir to Kanyakumari are wondering what will happen to the Godavari, the Krishna, the Ganges.

Here in Delhi, the monsoon is coming. A few showers have fallen suddenly, giving a glimpse of what is yet to come: the streets around my house flooding in minutes; the clipclop of cows trudging through the waters; saris hiked up and puddles gathering in my apartment. Down the block, the slum is buzzing with noise, and the river starts to flow again, water rolling out of Delhi, into the Ganges, and down towards the sea.