Tulsi
Badrinath

When the Tap Ran Dry: A Chennai Memory That Opens This Story

There are many parts of Chennai that face a shortage of water, especially during the summer months. In 2005 and 2006 this shortage extended across the city, and the chlorinated water that arrived in homes to be stored in overhead tanks and sumps shrank to a trickle. Now outside every gate and homestead, people waited with their vessels for the water tanker to lumber down the street, and then rushed to fill their quota of water for the day. My home was no different and as I stood on the road outside with an assortment of empty buckets, I remember wondering with a great sense of dread whether one would have to abandon the parched city, all four million of us, when the reservoirs of water were emptied and the monsoon failed us.
At the time, this shortage was attributed to poor management of the city’s water resources but after the floods of 2015 and then the dire water shortage of 2019, it was clear that this was linked to larger questions of unchecked ‘development’ that laid layers of mud and cement over age-old waterways and marshland that had fed the city with water and also drained it of excess rain. And now, in recent years, with an increased focus on climate change, a new question poses itself: how to undo the damage, how to channel the gift of rain by harvesting it.
I wrote this scene into the novel I was writing at the time, Man of A Thousand Chances, as it was a domestic situation familiar to all citizens of this city.

Water as Currency: A Scene from Man of A Thousand Chances

It was Saturday, and the water-tanker would be arriving at his street any minute now. They could not afford to miss it; the household was down to three buckets of water from the usual, essential store of twelve. Harihar began collecting pots, cans, buckets from the bath-room, the kitchen, the verandah and the area where dishes were washed.

Water was most precious in the city. Money had value because it bought water. For years now, Harihar had paid water tax even though no water came through the subterranean maze of rusted pipes; taps snorted hot air. Parched reservoirs bared their nakedness to the skies.

The old white-washed well in Baba’s house was now an arid, useless shaft. To peer over the rim, his gaze plummeting past telescoping bands of moss-stained brick to the inky slush at the bottom, made Harihar giddy. Filaments of light radiating outwards from an enormous, fragile spider’s web revealed the spots on the wall where it was anchored. Small plants grew forlorn on the inner walls. Baba had reluctantly sealed its dark, circular mouth with iron-mesh and Harihar lost again an element of his childhood.

In the city, bore-wells were sunk lower and lower into the ground, trying to sneak below the water table before it descended even further. In villages, farmers earned more selling the water from their wells to the voracious thirsty city, than from crops. Ironically the four days’ heavy rainfall that had seeped into the Chubb safe and given Harihar chance, had been the ruin of farmers. Unseasonal rains, in March, were worse than no rain. Paddy crops were damaged, as were the nascent watermelons. So when the rains stopped, Harihar did not know whether to be happy or sad.

Meeta shuffled sleepily out of her room. Her face looked unformed in the morning, her features emerging slowly with every sip of tea and greater wakefulness.

‘Did you sleep well? You must’ve dreamt of a fabulous sari! Today we will go and buy you that very sari, the sari of your dreams!’ declared Harihar as he headed for the landing. ‘We’ll leave early, say around 4.30—5, that way we’ll have lots of time to look for a good one. Think of a colour that you don’t already have…’

‘Today?’ cried Meeta, now fully awake and excited. She ran and threw her arms around his waist. ‘Really?’

‘Hanh-hanh, today,’ smiled Harihar as he hugged her close. He would give her the whole world if he had the money…not one kanjeevaram but ten…diamonds the size of stones…a wedding fit for a princess, he thought to himself, his eyes misting over. Seconds later, he disentangled himself and said gently, ‘Come, there is no time, the tanker will be here any minute.’ He handed her a stack of buckets. ‘Take these down, I’m coming.’

‘Mummy, did you hear? We are going shopping today! For my kanjeevaram sari!’ Meeta picked up the buckets but ran in the opposite direction to the kitchen.

‘Hanh-hanh, I heard!’ smiled Sarla, patting Meeta’s cheek lovingly. ‘What colour do you want? Tell me soon!’ Meeta’s eyes shone deliriously as she danced excitedly around her mother, the buckets banging against her knees. Sarla and Harihar looked at each other through the kitchen door with amused pleasure.

Meeta skipped down the steps ahead of Harihar shouting aloud various combinations of colour. ‘Sandal yellow and maroon, no — lime green and red. Maybe Krishna blue and magenta? Or just one colour with thick zari? Purple?’ She set the buckets on the road and clapped her hands in joy, ‘We are going shopping today, yippee!’

Soon, Harihar stood at the entrance to his building, an assortment of containers around him. He had brought some extra vessels from the kitchen. The landlord was away; perhaps Harihar might get some of his share.

At various intervals, on either side of the road, other householders stood amidst a riot of stacked colour. Vibrant plastic buckets, distinctive steel pots — kodams, white jerry cans and old-fashioned brass vessels were also pressed into service. Some of the women were in their nighties, of thick cotton and close-necked, some displaying the frill of a petticoat beneath, but nighties nonetheless. It disconcerted Harihar; revealed how irrevocably the city had changed. Two houses away, a marwari woman stood waiting. There was something youthful about her long skirt and colourful veil and it made that stout matron seem girl-like, even though her face was puffy and unattractive. The shy housewife four doors away, palla tucked into her waist, was remarkable; her many buckets, shockingly, were of one colour, royal maroon. At home, Sarla had ensured the segregation of their bathroom buckets by the code red.

One by one Harihar morosely pulled the stack undone, and arranged the empty containers. This motley display of his private, modest possessions on the road reduced him, made him anxious. Some terrible day the sources of water would be exhausted; they would have to abandon the beloved city. Would it happen in his lifetime? Briefly, a vague unease troubled his mind.

They stood eagerly awaiting their supply of water. All heads were turned right, all eyes on the bend in the road; there was no telling when the tanker would turn the corner, emerge onto their stretch. Sometimes it was late by more than half an hour. Heard well before it was seen, the tanker ground into view, water sloshing out of the hatch at the top of its cylindrical body. Parts of it had corroded, leaving sharp brown teeth of metal, gaping holes. Like a giant blue snail leaving a shiny trail, the vehicle splashed water onto the road travelled. Periodically, dense black fumes spewed out of its vibrating exhaust pipe.

Harihar folded back the thin cotton sleeves of his kurta and hitched his pyjama higher over his paunch, as though readying himself for a fight. He positioned himself ahead of his buckets, waiting to sprint forward. Even at his age, Harihar could never stifle the secret excitement aroused in him by that benevolent fiend on wheels. Its big roar, enormous size, and the relief born of its arrival made an event of what otherwise was testimony of the city’s desperation.

The battered tanker passed Harihar and hissed to a stop ahead of him. A young attendant in shorts and a dirty T-shirt, a talisman strung on a black string round his throat, rode the toy ladder at the back like an acrobat.

Harihar ran to grab the bit of leaking hose protruding from the back of the truck. The boy hopped down and released the valve. Clear, chlorinated water gushed into the dry space of Harihar’s bucket. A fine, crazy spray escaped sideways from the hose-pipe, despite a primitive bandage of discoloured cloth. Two minutes, all Harihar could fill in two minutes was his. Meeta and Sarla arrived to form a relay. Around him, Harihar could hear shouts and exasperated instructions, curses, raucous behaviour but he was intent on the sparkling water, the giver of life. The press of desperate people converged on him. Someone pushed, nudging him out of the way and he realized he had filled his coffers. He took a deep breath as he stumbled away from the centre of that warm, stifling crescent of voluble neighbours.

At his door-step, translucent plastic glowed bright with liquid. Splintered across the wavering pools of water and floating leaves, were reflections of sky, the shadow of cement walls and a play of light. They would have to make the water last for two, maybe three days.

Wincing as he straightened his back, he lifted a pair of buckets and half ran, half danced up the steps with them. Meeta hauled one awkwardly, sticking her free arm out for balance. Sarla could not lift anything that heavy along a slope. Determinedly ignoring the pain, she stood receiving the buckets in the landing upstairs, sorting them again by use and destination. Talking all the while, Meeta dredged the colour of every sari noted from the depths of memory and brought it up to the light of her mother’s approval. ‘Grey? Like smoke? Brown? Chocolate-y muddy brown? The betelnut-red Savitri Tai-ji has? Off-white? Jasmine colour?’ Sarla punctuated every colour mentioned by Meeta with a frown and a single word, ‘No.’ Meeta knew that if Sarla did not like anything in the shop, they would come home without a sari. It would be wiser to agree on an acceptable colour-combination beforehand. She persevered breathlessly. ‘Mint green? Papaya orange? Mauve and post-box red?’ only to be met with Sarla’s weary ‘No, no, no-no-no!’ Harihar noticed the increasingly vexed expression on Meeta’s face and quickly interjected, ‘It’s okay, you can decide later. There’s no great hurry. Let’s finish this work first.’ Finally, the receptacles were conveyed to their proper places. The dish-washing room had become a convenient, notionally pure place to store extra water. From here, it could be taken either to the bathroom or used in the kitchen. Harihar shivered slightly. His white kurta, tinged blue by moisture, clung to his skin; he was completely wet! Drawing it off with a cross-handed tug, feeling an ear-lobe twist as the garment rose over his neck, he disappeared into the bathroom. He had learnt to bathe with economy, renounce the simple, guiltless pleasure of pouring mug after bracing mug of cold water over himself.