Water

[I recently found out that March 22 was World Water Day and that this week is generally celebrated as World Water Week: http://water.org/world-water-day. So posted this piece that I had written in August 2009.]


It is easy to use a gallon of water to wash my coffee mug but some memories come in the way, sometimes.

At boarding school in Jaipur in winter, we were each given half a bucket of hot water that we filled up to one bucket with cold water to bathe with.

In Madras water is always in short supply. In the fifties and sixties you had to wake up at 3 am and fill every large receptacle with water for the day because that was the only time water was released from the corporation.

In years that the rains fail the reservoirs dry up and to this day you have to buy water from vendors in trucks if you can afford to, and carry them up three flights of stairs if that’s where you live. It is a daily routine in most houses to boil water to make it fit for drinking even if it is what comes through the corporation water supply.

In Kerala, where water was plentiful especially after the rains, it still didn’t flow out of a faucet with a flick of the wrist. All the water for domestic use had to be drawn by hand, pail by pail, on a rope and pulley system. While we were fortunate to have help to do that, I could never bring myself to using endless scoops of water either to bathe with or wash up. This was because I would often hang out in the back yard and watch the effort it took Chinna or her mother Neeli to fill the two large bins in the bathroom. As for the toilet, they had to draw the water from the well, fill up a large pot and make several trips to the outhouse at the edge of the property to fill the bin there, pot by pot.

Such memories make me pause a bit.

Water now readily flows out of the faucet in my house in the Midwest. Any amount I want and fully potable, as long as I pay for what I use. While memories linger, sometimes I find myself letting the shower run a little longer than needed. And occasionally using a gallon of water to wash my coffee mug.

Kitchen windows - then and now: