Here are some basic facts. Of course, the facts about a town like Rahimatpur can only be basic. They are also historical. Very little of the present that is not history is worth narrating. A semi-urban place of about 14,000 people, 124 kilometres south-southwest of Pune in the state of Maharashtra. Tradition lists seven rivers of India to be the most sacred: Ganga, Sindhu, Sarasvati (now non-existent), Yamuna, Godavari, Narmada, Kaveri and Krishna. Our town belongs to the Krishna Valley. The river is about fourkilometres from Rahimatpur. The first thing which strikes you about the township is that it is located as if it were at the bottom of a bowl. It is surrounded by hills. As you step out of the town in any direction you move up from the base towards the edge. As often happens in this part of Western India, you climb to the top of a hill, you find yourself not at the peak but rather on an enormous plateau, often most windy.
Rahimatpur (literally, the Town of His Mercy) was established sometime in the 16-17th century as a Revenue Post of the Adilshahi Sultanate (capital Bijapur, present-day Karnataka). It is located on a highway connecting Bijapur to Satara (another historic town of late medieval India). Once, Rahimatpur was a commercial centre known for its textile market. The Sultanate was not a big empire. And this was its tiny outpost in the far northwest.
You can even now see that the town was originally neat and well-planned. Two avenues, about half a kilometre long, cross each other in the middle of the town. The habitation is along this axis. Most small (and large) towns of historical interest are replete with narrow lanes (galls) that go hither and thither, giving character to the neighbourhood. The poet Zauq once said, Knun jayega Zauq, DiIli ki galiyan clihod kar? (Why would anyone want to leave the lanes of Delhi?) However, Rahimatpur is not a town of galis. It is a town of avenues; broad avenues at that. Its cross-streets are broad too. You get the feeling that when the town was new, it must have looked a bit like Lutyens' Delhi does today, except that Rahimatpur is tiny and does not have imposing buildings. But the sense of space is the same, or at least comparable.
The town stands along a river, or rivulet. Three beautiful temples stand at two ends of the town along this watercourse. Once it was a river in its own right, a tiny tributary of the Krishna. It even had a name: Kamandalu, the water pot that sadhus carry. A metaphor had become a name. When I was a school-kid in the Town of His Mercy, there was a lot of water, clean, drinkable water in the Kamandalu. It was even possible to swim in the river. Now the water has become its pathetic Other: dirty, near-dry, totally undrinkable.