January 16, 2019

A Raleigh Bicycle, Two Brothers and Thirteen Pots....

It was 1989, I was thirteen and brother was eleven. Appa (Father) had started constructing our new house. 

First big road block was WATER!!.
A 200 feet drill fetched innumerable pieces of black rock but no WATER!!
Somehow, we managed to get our home ready by renting WATER (Not mentioning about the fortune the guy made by counting us wrong number of tank loads)

As soon as we shifted, the first task on hand was WATER!!
Brother and Me used our mathematical brains (one of Appa's friends' mentioned that, We hadn't realised that till then ;)) to get water.
We used to tie ropes to plastic pots (Bindige in Kannada), hung them across the old but strong Raleigh cycle (All this while, I was thinking Rally was the spelling ;)) we had recently procured for this purpose.
Lengths of these ropes were measured to perfection so that our trips fetch maximum amount of water.
Lazy were we to fetch it again :)
Post that, we used to drag ourselves uphill first and then downhill to the hand pump to fetch.
The journey would easily have been more than a kilometre
The most difficult part was manoeuvring the bicycle on the way back on the downhill with these pots filled with water to the brink...

EVERY DROP COUNTS!!
Then came the savings part, 
Morning pees were in the open yard in front of our home.
Showers were crisp with water in 3/4th or less of a bucket.
We had even started to have baths alternate days or even longer too... 
Re-use when possible.. as in
Use water used to wash clothes and utensils (We used to wash them with our own hands:) ) to water the plants.

HIS BLESSINGS!!
As soon as it thunders and heavens opens its gates, forget about the time of the day or night get all pots, fill them with water pouring from the ceiling and dump it in the underground water tank...
That used to save us from the trips for many days to come..

However, drinking water had to come from the hand pump... 
For which we always used to fight, on whose turn it was

All these incidents flashed in front of my eyes as soon as I saw above forward in WhatsApp sometime back...

It is soooo soooo very difficult for anyone to make any other understand that 
EVERY DROP COUNTS....
Then I thought, a BLOG would be a step forward...
Does anyone want to walk along or not, 
I WALK THIS PATH!!

Ciao! 

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