Water blues

So what’s new? It’s raining or pouring, and there’s enough water in the streets to float boats and maybe sail along.

But no one is floating boats, not paper ones, not real ones, because no one is amused.

The story I read between the rivulets that the rain causes to rush along is the old one that the Ancient Mariner intoned: of there being ‘Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.’
That could well be the case with our city.

Why, you ask, with all the rain that is already pouring in bucketfuls and more to come? The season has after all only now started.

Well, because, if we are lucky the lakes will fill and perhaps overflow, giving us relief from prospective water cuts in the second summer that waits a few months ahead.

But water is not all about what is available in the lakes alone.
It is expected to seep into the ground, wet the soil and the layers beneath, and collect as a layer of ground water that keeps water levels intact below the soil.

Ground water is precious. It keeps the earth cool, it feeds the roots of trees as they go searching under the surface for nourishment, and it helps fuel the tube wells that every house seems to think is necessary.

But today, in this our city of plenty, there is plenty that runs wastefully away. Into drains, onto the roads and finally into the sea. Good clean water, sans saline, water that could feed the soil, slake thirst, fill Sintex tanks in places where water is not on tap….
The reason is not hard to find.

The paving block, the little jig saw puzzled shapes that fit closely together and create terracotta coloured landscapes on streets and in front of houses and on pavements has become the new plaything of city planners. They are easy to lay, easy to repair, or dig up should the need arise.

Great idea, but there needs some thought into how and where the boundaries of the paving should lie. Look around and you will see that every inch of available space on roads and sidewalks is paved. There is little space between the pieces for water to enter. The result, flooding. And no ground water.

This is something that is not just a malaise that has hit this city; reports from other places, greener and cleaner, Nagpur for example, talk of the concretisation of the spaces that result in trees dying for lack of water, birds dropping dead in summer of thirst…

Water… reams have been written about it. But in the very building where I sit, my friend who lives in a high rise that overlooks it, tells me that every morning, without fail, the water storage tank overhead overflows and floods the terrace.

In the process probably weakening the building, but also wasting so much precious fluid to evaporation. The watchmen don’t seem to care, no one has been able to change the valve or whatever is required to stop the waste.

And the building boom is back. Dream homes are springing up like mushrooms, and there are takers for all. Prices rise higher than the countless floors of the multi storeys that are crowding the
sky out.

Is any one asking where they will get their water from? And for how long?

Or is that a new jigsaw puzzle that must be pieced together, despite the missing pieces?