Curdi, India: The Goan Village That Resurfaces Every May

Summary

Curdi (also spelled Kurdi) was a fertile, religiously mixed village in Sanguem taluka of South Goa, nestled in the foothills near the Western Ghats and watered by the Salaulim River. By the standards of the region it was prosperous and crowded — home to roughly 3,000 people across some 600 families who farmed paddy and cashew, tapped coconut and lived alongside one another as Hindus, Catholics and Muslims around a shared temple, chapel and shrine. In the mid-1980s it became the first community submerged by the reservoir of the Salaulim Dam, a project built to supply irrigation and drinking water to much of Goa.

The village disappeared beneath the rising reservoir as its roughly 600 families were resettled in the nearby villages of Valkinim and Vaddem, scattering a tight-knit, multi-faith community across the district. Its principal Hindu shrine, the Someshwar Temple, was dismantled stone by stone and rebuilt on higher ground near the dam to spare it from the water. What might have been an ordinary story of dam-displacement then took an unusual turn dictated by the reservoir's own rhythm — each year before the monsoon, when the dam draws down to its lowest level, the water recedes far enough to lay bare the bones of Curdi once more.

Every April and May the cracked, ochre lakebed gives the village back — house foundations and thresholds, old wells, and surviving structures including a hillside chapel and the remains of other temples emerge into the sun. Former residents and their descendants make an annual pilgrimage home, returning across the dry reservoir floor to clean ancestral sites, picnic among the ruins, hold the chapel feast and celebrate the festival of the relocated Someshwar Temple, turning a loss into a recurring act of remembrance and reunion.

Curdi has thus become one of the most poignant of the world's drowned villages — not a place mourned only in the past tense, but one that reassembles itself every year for a community that refuses to let it vanish. The annual homecoming has drawn growing attention as a moving example of how displaced people keep a destroyed place alive through ritual, even after the dam and reservoir have done their work.

Timeline

Before the Flood

Curdi lay in Sanguem taluka in the interior of South Goa, on fertile land along the Salaulim River near the foothills of the Western Ghats. It was, by local accounts, among the more prosperous villages in the area — green with paddy fields, cashew groves and coconut and areca palms, and large enough to support roughly 3,000 people in about 600 households. The land was good, the water plentiful, and the village had the comfortable density of a long-settled rural community.

What made Curdi distinctive was its blend of faiths living side by side. The village held a main Hindu temple — the Someshwar Temple — along with smaller temples, a Christian chapel and a Muslim shrine, and Hindus, Christians and Muslims shared its fields, festivals and daily life. This easy coexistence in a single small village became part of what former residents most cherished and most mourned, because resettlement scattered the community and broke the everyday closeness that the shared village had made possible.

For centuries the village had been an unremarkable but thriving piece of the Goan countryside, its life organised around the harvest, the river and the calendars of three religions. That ordinariness is part of what makes its story resonate: Curdi was not a monument or a famous town but a living community, and its loss was the loss of a whole web of relationships that a reservoir could submerge but its people would not let die.

The Flooding

Curdi was flooded by the Salaulim Irrigation Project, a major water scheme that dammed the Salaulim River — a tributary of the Zuari — to provide irrigation for farmland and drinking water for much of central and southern Goa. The decision dated to the 1960s under Chief Minister Dayanand Bandodkar, who pressed ahead knowing that Curdi and the neighbouring Kurpem would be submerged. As the lowest-lying community in the project's path, Curdi was the first village the rising water reached.

Residents began leaving from the early 1970s and dam construction advanced through the mid-1970s, with the reservoir finally drowning the village in 1986. Its roughly 600 families were resettled mainly into the nearby villages of Valkinim and Vaddem, where they were given land and compensation. The relocation broke up a community that had lived together for generations, dispersing neighbours and faith groups who had shared the same small village — and in some resettled areas the promised dam water reportedly never fully reached the new homes.

The flooding was deliberate and planned, an accepted element of the irrigation scheme rather than an accident or failure. Yet because the Salaulim reservoir is managed for irrigation and supply, it is drawn down each year before the monsoon, and that operational rhythm gave the drowning an unusual afterlife. The same management that keeps Goa supplied with water also, every year, briefly returns Curdi to its people.

Contributing Factors

What Surfaces

Each April and May, as the Salaulim reservoir falls to its pre-monsoon low, the lakebed dries and cracks and Curdi rises back into view for about a month. House foundations and thresholds, old wells, a hillside chapel and the remains of other temples emerge from the ochre mud, sketching the outline of the village across the exposed reservoir floor, while the principal Someshwar Temple survives intact on higher ground where it was rebuilt before the flooding.

The reappearance is the cue for an annual homecoming. Former residents and their descendants walk out across the dry bed to find their family plots, clean and honour ancestral sites, picnic among the ruins and hold the chapel feast. They also celebrate the festival of the relocated Someshwar Temple. For a community broken apart by resettlement, the few weeks of exposure each year are a chance to reassemble in the place that made them neighbours, and the event has become a recognised tradition that draws relatives from across the district and beyond.

When the monsoon arrives in early June and the reservoir refills, the water covers the houses and the wells once again, and Curdi returns to the depths until the following summer.

Lessons

References

• Curdi Wikipedia
• Salaulim Dam Wikipedia
• Disappearing Act: This Goan Village Emerges From the Water Just Once a Year! The Better India
• In Pics: The Submerged Village of Curdi in Goa The Better India