Pani Pani Re...

It burns in the daytime and rains like crazy in the evening. My cold is just refusing to go away. Native is very cloudy these days it seems but no good rains yet. Hope it'll be a good monsoon this year. I hate mother having to worry about that well in the summer.

The first time we had trouble with this well I remember very well. I think none of us will forget that year. There is a bore well nearby but mother thought it wasn't respectable to go fetch water in the daytime so in the nights when the whole neighborhood would be ready to sleep, we four would start off with pitchers towards the bore well. Pappa would be doing the pumping, mother, V and I at regular distances carrying the water home. It was quite a tiring thing to do for a whole month with the water quantity not being great at times. Sometimes we even had to return empty-handed and try later. And then, just when the summer ended, mother was down with Typhoid. When I think of it sometimes, it feels like a nightmare.

When I was a kid and we were in the rented place, our well always used to go dry in the summer. It was an event for me to go and look at the water going down every morning. Clear water would turn muddy and one day the pitcher would hit the rock at the bottom. Then it was time to go to Anuradhakka's place which is about 100 meters away for the drinking water and the plantation well for other things. Anuradhakka's well is a huge one and I've never seen it in bad shape even in summers, thank God for that. They were very nice about it and though we felt a bit apologetic in the beginning, soon got over it and treated it as our own.

I think we as a people will have real trouble with the water soon. Already we are over-dependent on the tankers in our area with every other day one bore well being drilled. There is bound to be water-scarcity soon.

There is a rumor that they are going to salvage an old lake in front of our house. I didn't even know it existed!