Water Woes

Survivors of the water crisis

Water supply may have been restored (ref post of February 1) in many parts yesterday, but its after-effects were visible in the Garden today morning. The only question on everybody’s lips was how did they do without water for three days. Rank strangers greeted one another on the walking track asking whether they “managed to get water” eventually. Or were they still having to deal with dry taps?
Nahid Khan, Bhaswati Bose, Zarina Khan and others who did not show up for the exercises today were assumed to

Naheed Siddiqui

be among the unfortunate lot or else, were busy cleaning up and putting their houses in order this morning.
Shekhawat informed that he had collected assorted pots and pans and a bucket, ready to be loaded in a car had the water crisis lasted one more day. He reported there were no Bisleri bottles available (“even at double the price”) and that the municipality’s assurance of “free tanker service” was a hoax. “No private water tanker was taking any call,” he added.
Bihari Milwani did a wise thing. On Saturday, he filled eight bottles of drinking water from his office in Khar and those lasted him till last night when water supply was restored in his area. Many complained of being unable to bathe for the last three days and in fact, were conspiring to land en masse at Shekhawat’s place for a proper shower. But Bijoy Gupta was convinced that Shekhawat himself did not bathe. “Don’t you people get a distinct stink in the air?” he queried while exercising.
The best anecdote was to come from Naheed Siddiqui. Unaware of the water crisis, she did not make any arrangement for storing water and merrily spent her Saturday at a friend’s place. When she returned home on Sunday, she was horrified to find only two bottles of drinking water in the kitchen. Panic seized her and she “tried everything possible” for just one bucket of water, only to draw a blank.
“Finally I called my son,” she narrated. “He came and opened the connection to the overhead tank in my bathroom and I had all the water I needed – just that it was water stored for six years. Imagine, for six years, I had no idea that there was an inbuilt storage tank in my own house!”
This discovery, she considers, was a big blessing from the water crisis.