Paper short abstract:

This paper is an exercise in rethinking the relation between land and sea through the lenses of river and rain. This calls attention to entanglements engendered by pervasive flows as it serves as an invitation to reconsider the oceanic commons.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is an exercise in rethinking the relation between land and sea. Along the sea front of the Bengal delta, comprising much of Bangladesh and India's West Bengal, the sea is widely thought of as river. To fishermen and farmers alike, the proper sea is considered to begin only miles into what maps label as the Bay of Bengal. While this exemplifies local taxonomies of the waterscape, it also highlights the deep reach terrestrial formations (such as the river) have into the sea.

Architects Mathur and Cunha (2017), on the other hand, have recently proposed to think (South Asian) rivers as rain. This conceptual shift insists on the pervasive, highly transformative nature of the water cycle of which rivers are only one ephemeral articulation. It emphasizes the penetrative quality of water, soaking soil and evaporating into thin air.

In fundamentally differing ways, both these framings enlarge the reach of rivers, spilling the riverine far beyond its banks. This paper takes these articulations as an invitation to rethink the maritime. It argues that to think the sea through the lenses of river and rain familiarizes the sea. It also serves as cue to become attentive to the entanglements of land and sea engendered by flows reaching both ways and involving the registers of energy, materiality, practice and ideas. To think the sea as river and rain, then, helps to reach beyond land/sea binarities underpinning marine relations, while also serving as an invitation to reconsider the oceanic commons.