Once the city's lifeline, Yamuna now flows past almost unnoticed. The clamour about its cleaning is too old and has long died down. Last year when it overflew, a few vehicles stopped by and people wondered how beautiful it looked in spate. A cultural affair recently held in the national capital, reminded Delhiites that there is a little bit of Yamuna in their lives.

The Yamuna - Elbe project (Elbe is a German river), an outreach programme organised jointly by the city of Hamburg, Max-Mueller Bhawan and the Delhi Government metamorphosed the landscape of the riverside. On a day at the project site, as the sun changed its colour from yellow to crimson red and finally went down, the colourful evening began. The mirror image of the Yamuna bridge reflecting in the water was quite a spectacle. The project seems to have achieved its objective of igniting people's imagination, making them aware of the beauty of the river and what we are doing to it.

"The project's intent was to involve and initiate a public debate. This is one among the rare projects which goes beyond art for art's sake. Public action happens when one feels about it. Its not just through political activism, the images sustain in your head", said Ravi Aggarwal of Toxic Links, one of the two curators, the other being Till Krause, a land artist from Germany. The outreach project took place in Hamburg and Delhi from October 16 to November 23.