Salvation in the Water
It was my wedding day in the month of a warm, dry September—the day that I had anticipated would be spent dreaming about my future with a lovely wife, weaving imaginary moments of bliss that we would spend together. But it happened otherwise due to the severity of the occasion, which reaped its enormous, hundredfold consequence, and the reason being the climatic condition leading to the non-availability of adequate water.
Ours was a small town, Roopganj, about 123 km away from Delhi, and we shared the same river Yamuna, with the capital city. We faced difficulty in getting a bride from the nearby areas, as none of the families who had spoken to us about a suitable matrimony were interested after our city was hit by a severe water crisis about a year ago. They wouldn’t allow their daughters to perform the drudgery of collecting water we faced in our daily lives—an inconvenient complexity that life had thrown at us. At last, my parents got in touch with a family residing in Delhi, who willingly accepted our proposal, since we were not in favour of taking dowry from the bride’s family.
It was always an issue to get enough water during the dry, summer months when the Yamuna dried up and converted into a small stream. But that year, there was a severe water crisis due to a lack of rainfall during the monsoon season. People reasoned out that it was due to climate change as a result of global warming and deforestation.
In the forest area, outside our town, several trees were uprooted to build a mall and cinema complex—a limitless, free rein to satiate our infinite needs, and overpower the forest that was a source of raw materials for commercially important products like wood, paper, medicine and fabric.
I recalled the incident that happened a few years ago when the once vibrant, lush green vegetation was cleared. About hundreds of tall- and moderate-sized trees, like oak, banyan, mango and neem, of the adjoining forest area were cut down, blinding the area in a cloud of dust and soil. After the barks of the fallen trees were peeled, the creamish-white wood lay bare in bundles for weeks, which were eventually transported to nearby cities in big trucks, creating pollution through the emission of black smoke from the vehicles. The habitat of innumerable plant and animal species lay exposed to the harsh climatic fury, threatening their very existence. The trees of the forest acted as a canopy that regulated the temperature, helped to control the water level in the atmosphere that returned to the soil, and acted as valuable carbon sinks, absorbing other particulate matter. Without that, there was a release of more carbon, and the healthy, breathable air was lost. The physiognomy of the forest changed, and so were the appearances of seasons, imperceptibly mingling into one another—one arriving abruptly, unexpectedly, perhaps inadvertently driven by drastic temperature variations, at intervals reserved for another—and ultimately, what remained were extremely dry summers, witnessing the heat from the fire of the enkindled day and hot, suffocating nights, and very cold, shivering winters, with or without the solace of monsoon rains, creating completely moisture-less spells, which affected the cultivation of crops and proved fatal for many living beings.
The construction of a popular entertainment hub enabled employment for several while taking away the normal advent of seasons and affected the rainfall, resulting in food and water scarcity. Every other day, we heard people who visited the nearby forest—whatever was left of it—to find lifeless bodies of animals like deer, wild boars, wild buffaloes lying here and there—the dangerous, unsettling effects of deforestation, placing some of them on the verge of extinction. The once heavenly landscape—the snug, cosy shelter—to countless flora and fauna had turned pallid, desolate; the fresh, intoxicating air vanished; the nourishing, flavourful, long-lasting fragrances that nature emanated were lost, disintegrated like the colours on an artist’s palette that turned vapid when uncared for, disregarded.
As I was busy contemplating these issues, the water tanker arrived. The hour was about ten in the morning.
‘Go and get water from the tanker.’ Someone called out from outside our house.
My younger brother Sunil and some of our friends, who had volunteered to help in my wedding preparations, took several buckets and rushed outside. I was willing to help them out with the task, but my mother insisted I mustn’t engage in any kind of activity on my wedding day.
The water tanker came to our area thrice a week whenever there was a water crisis. Each household was relegated to around 40 litres every time. Perhaps that was enough for two days, which included a brief shower, two cooked meals, half a bucket for dishwashing and laundry, hand-washing and tooth brushing a couple of times. Water for the toilet flush had to be managed from the dirty water that accumulated from dishwashing and laundry. Apart from that, drinking water was purchased from the nearby grocery stores, and again, that was rationed to 20 litres per person for a week. I read somewhere that one must have approximately 8–10 litres of water every day, and it didn’t fit in the quota allocated to each individual.
I reacted with a start on hearing people scream at the top of their voices outside. Running barefoot to the window, I found, at a distance, a long queue of men and women along with the creaking of utensils, clattering of piles of colourful—red, blue, yellow—buckets, barrels and urns. Sunil and our friends were near the light blue-coloured water tanker, arguing with some of the people awaiting their turn to fetch water.
‘We have a wedding today. So we need some extra water.’ Sunil tried to explain to the unruly crowd that stared at him with an impatient eye roll, comprising mostly of our neighbours who were cordial and friendly even a moment before the incident. They seemed to have changed radically, as they were on the verge of hitting my brother and our friends with stones picked up from the road, perhaps fatigued and irritated, undergoing the ordeal of collecting water for the past several months.
‘No. We don’t want to listen to anything.’ Someone from the crowd spoke to no one in particular.
‘If you want extra water, you should fend for yourself,’ said another.
‘What are we going to do if we don’t get enough water?’ continued the second one, and all agreed in unison.
In a flash, a woman with a podgy face, probably in her forties, tugged the pallu of her sari to her waist, positioned herself right in front of the tanker, and protested against my brother in a shrill voice, in a rather vigorous language, pointing her fingers at him. But her jumbled-up words hardly reached me.
It was almost impossible to manage the angry agitators, and their gibbering of curses and insults, accompanied by the brawling pails of stainless steel, brass, and the jabbering plastic pitchers.
An officer wearing a fluorescent orange jacket ascended from the tanker.
‘Calm down, everybody! All of you will get your quota. We are not going to favour anybody here, even if there is a wedding. One should be aware of the water crisis and act accordingly.’ He said, adjusting his yellow helmet.
My brother walked up to the officer. Both of them went to a spot behind the tanker where no one was watching. After a while, I saw them coming out with smiling faces and shaking hands with each other.
Once Sunil returned home, I asked him what the matter was.
‘I have settled everything. We will collect our quota of water now. In the afternoon, the officer would arrange for another water tanker exclusively for us. It’s just that we have to pay a little extra.’ He said jubilantly, fidgeting with his mobile phone.
We belonged to a middle-class household, and my graduation degree in arts, attained from the local college, rendered me a job of a librarian at the neighbourhood library, where I earned a meagre salary. Spending money on such instances was a luxury that we couldn’t afford. A lot of our savings had already been spent on buying water for our daily consumption.
*
I was busy watching my aunties, who had come to attend the wedding, bustle about the kitchen, lending a helping hand to my mother organising lunch for the visitors.
A little later, my father’s friend Umesh uncle, a retired army officer probably in his early seventies, visited us. There was an opportunity for little conversation before I reappraised the plans for my special day and got busy with the wedding arrangements.
‘How are you, Umesh uncle?’
‘I came here to congratulate you. I know certain things cannot wait, but perhaps this wasn’t the right time to get married amidst such a water crisis.’ He held his right hand forward in a bid to shake hands with me.
Being the eldest son of the family, with one brother and two sisters younger to me, I was encumbered by the responsibilities of practical life, along with my primary duty to support my family, and as such, my wedding got delayed. It was my grandmother’s wish that I got married without any further delay, as I was already forty.
‘There are a lot of things that must be done. We need people like you to join us.’ He said, while his eyes wandered around the books on the bookshelf.
‘What can I do to solve this water crisis?’ I asked.
‘Come with me.’ He continued with a glance of reflectiveness, observing my inclination towards resolving the issue.
Together with Umesh uncle, I crossed the residential complex of bright pink-coloured, numbered houses, a few blocks away from our house, which had been a part of a recent project about two to three years ago; the booming marketplace at the central part of the town filled with all kinds of shops starting from vegetables, fish, meat, bakery, sweets, to building materials, garments, chemists, some open and others yet to start their trading; and reached the barren, deserted land at the furthest end of the town, adjoining the forest area.
With time, the unobstructed tract of grassland beside the forest area was utilised for extensive cattle ranching and facilitation of human activities related to housing, which eventually led to the desertification of the land. I saw the area had been demarcated, fenced with iron wires and a bamboo gate. As we went inside, I found a portion of the area been dug up and separated out for rain water-harvesting purposes—the recharge pit constructed was about 6 feet wide and 6 feet deep. Umesh uncle told me that the pit was filled with boulders, gravel and coarse sand. Throughout, there were several saplings of pipal, bargad, neem, kadamb, amaltas, shisham, arjun, jamun and pilkhan.
‘These will grow into trees. It will take years to reach that stage, but at least we have initiated the process.’ He said, pointing to the saplings.
‘How did you get hold of the land? Wasn’t it planned to get a housing complex built here?’ I asked.
‘That’s a long story,’ observed the old man, after a minute’s silence. ‘It has become like an epidemic that buildings, shopping complexes are sprawling at every nook and corner of our small town, just like mushrooms that grow profusely after a rain shower. Rampant construction activities have contaminated and destroyed our fertile land, impacting the climate.’ He mouthed some curses that I couldn’t hear and then shouted abuses. ‘Our purpose is to stop soil erosion and preserve it. We are trying to achieve that through the trees, which would retain water and subsequently, release it into the atmosphere via the process of transpiration.’ He resumed in a normal tone.
‘Great! But we don’t have enough water for the cultivation of plants. It hadn’t rained for the past so many months.’
‘Yes, I know. With whatever little water we have, we are trying our best to do what we can.’
He was speaking to me about his plans when Vrindavan uncle entered.
‘I’m doing a yajna to bring rainfall,’ said the garrulous man, probably in his late fifties, who had mostly lived his life being extremely religious, mostly indulging in quixotic efforts. He was the headmaster of the local school, a god-fearing individual, who had been carrying out these yajnas for the past several months with the hope that we would get a generous bounty of rain, to overcome the long doom of drought.
‘Without water, it is like living hell.’ He said prophetically, cleaning the spectacles, with quivering hands, that had been fogged by a sudden gust of his breath. ‘We have undertaken the difficult task to bring back the lost glory of Yamuna through tapasya and prayers.’ He continued, while his eyes wandered around the young saplings, and Umesh uncle pulled comical grimaces, raising his eyebrows.
‘We need to do everything possible to conserve our soil.’ Umesh uncle said, his hands fluttering with agitation.
‘It’s like bringing Ganga from Swarga, and we are the modern Bhagirathas. Our salvation depends on getting back the water of the Yamuna. We can hold everything in our fist but not water, yet we cannot live without it.’ Vrindavan uncle narrated the Hindu mythological story of King Bhagiratha.
Bhagiratha wanted to bring the river Ganga from the Swarga, as only she could bestow salvation to his sixty thousand ancestors (King Sagara’s sons) who were burnt to ashes due to sage Kapil’s curse and, as such, were not given the conventional funerary rites that are a must for ascension to the heavenly abode and for a better afterlife. After he performed an arduous tapasya in the extreme climate of the Himalayas and an excruciatingly harsh penance for a thousand years to please Lord Brahma, Ganga agreed to descend on Earth. As she cascaded down the Swarga, Bhagiratha and celestial onlookers were afraid of the roar and volume of water flowing that would devastate the Earth. Pleased with Bhagiratha’s prayers, Shiva arrived and held Ganga, who got entangled in his matted hair (jata). On Bhagiratha’s appeal, Shiva took out a strand of his hair, and from there originated the Ganga we know today.
Bhagiratha led the way for Ganga, and she followed him across the north and east of Bharat, finally merging with the ocean. In her course, she washed the ashes of Sagara’s sixty thousand sons, who were thus liberated from their sins and ascended to heaven while praising and blessing Bhagiratha.
Our salvation in the physical world where we existed was in the water we wished we could use normally, and not in the constrained fashion that its rarity had brought to our lives. Hoping that we would soon have the abundance of water back in our lives, and after deliberating on the subject for almost an hour, we returned home.
*
The water tanker didn’t arrive in the afternoon as promised. We had to beg and borrow water from our neighbours, who unwillingly parted with a minuscule amount of their costly possession. We were happy about the fact that, at last, the wedding was happening. At one point, we had imagined we would have to cancel it altogether.
We were getting ready at around four o’clock to start our journey to Delhi for the wedding, as it was scheduled to happen there, when the wind started blowing at a high speed, and strangely, there were dark, black clouds in the sky. Within minutes, the environment changed as darkness began to descend, and a storm rolled in, blinding us with dust particles in the gusty wind that bellowed. Realising that it was next to impossible to venture in those weather conditions, we decided to wait.
After a while, it started raining, at first slowly and then heavily, pouring into an enormous, heaving magnitude on the town with a strange fury. The tempestuous gale continued incessantly, gathered new strength and vehemence with every passing moment, as the rain continued for several hours; the river gained volume and, on being set free, with a gallop of large ocean waves and tumult of agitation, overflowed into our town. Our electricity connection was disrupted, and so were our Internet and telephone lines. We couldn’t inform the bride’s family and hoped they would get to know about the calamity through the television channels.
All our family members and relatives had gathered in the living room. We looked out the window, observing the rain through the rattling glass panes, unclear with droplets of water. The greyish-white and spacious contour of the sky appeared to be innocent yet menacing in its act of downpour, charging the land with its enraging power, with occasional trembling sparks of lightning and thunder, amplifying the brutality of the occasion. Trees visible from our window swayed in the storm, and the branches dangled under the weight of the raindrops. We watched them restlessly like a bird trapped in a cage. A constant roar of water, probably that of Yamuna, accompanied by noises of unidentified objects slamming around, was heard; the sound reverberated a hundredfold through the otherwise quiet town that watched nature’s fury like silent spectators. The road in front of our house, where kids laughed and played in the mornings and evenings, was deserted. The overflowing gutters and drains filled up the potholes on the road, creating mud puddles.
I ruminated about the delicious meal that was planned after the wedding. With youthful exultation, I recalled the moment when I stole a glance at my would-be wife for the first time when we were introduced to each other. How blessed I felt observing her charming manners. There was a gleam of a smile on her lips. On her black eyelashes, a tear sparkled, probably signifying a joyous occasion on meeting her soulmate. She faintly blushed and lowered her eyes. Reminiscences of the pleasant meeting tormented me, as I was transported back to the present reality that lay before me. Tears started welling up in my eyes. I was troubled by the gloomy, sullen gnawing of my mind that imagined the consequences of such a devastating downpour. Sudden orphanhood of my innate desire to get married flashed before me, when all the pleasures of life disappeared, and the joy of spending life with friends and family seemed to lose its meaning.
‘What are we going to do now?’ I asked my family, disconcerted.
My mother wiped her tears and looked at me beneath her eyelashes. ‘Don’t torture me, dear. I have been waiting for this day for so long.’ I could see her hope crumble into nothingness in front of my very eyes.
I was about to say a word of consolation to my mother when Ravi, a grocery store owner, rushed in, fully drenched in rain, his clothes sticking to his body, and the place where he stood formed a puddle of water. ‘Yamuna is going to cross its danger level. We all need to go to the local government school at the furthest end of the town, which is at a higher level than the entire town.’ He said, while his whole body trembled with agitation.
Before anyone could offer him a towel to dry up his body and change into fresh clothes, he left on the pretext that he had to inform more town dwellers about the decision taken by the governing body.
We were almost fifteen people, my parents, my younger brother and two sisters, my grandparents, along with my uncles, aunts and their children. In the failing light of the evening, we somehow schlepped through the water that had started accumulating in our front yard and reached our Maruti van, parked in front of our house. The elders boarded our car amid the heavy rain, and the rest covered the journey to the school on foot, tightly holding on to their umbrellas that were hard to manage.
I drove the car up to the school, made up of robust concrete at a higher ground that marked the beginning of the hilly area, wading through the inundated streets, where trees and electric poles lay uprooted on either side of the lanes, bare from the mostly missing greenery. The town seemed to be unrecognisable, the streets disarranged and empty. One or two solitary figures of humans were visible beneath the tousled sky, clinging onto whatever was firm and stood on the ground. It was like our vehicle was floating amidst the gushing streams of muddy water.
After some time, the rest of our relatives reached the school. The inhabitants of the entire town had assembled over there. The tables and chairs of the classrooms were stacked at one end of each room, carpets were laid on the floor, and candles were lit to ward off the darkness that kept penetrating our slowly extinguishing spirit. As we walked past the rooms in search of a comparatively less populated one, we heard the voices of suddenly homeless inhabitants of the town, speaking incoherently about the storm and the probability of relief teams reaching us.
I opened the door of a room, at the furthest corner on the first floor of the building, to admit my family members, while the candle on the table flickered in the breeze. We found some neighbours and acquaintances huddled on the carpet at one part of the room, gasping, saying things incoherently, some of them sneezing occasionally due to the wet clothes clinging to their bodies, but their eyes were mostly fixed on the windows. All eyes stared at us, as we walked in and settled down. Their body language gave the impression of a hasty, forlorn panic settling in them, born out of the tragic, distressed catastrophe.
‘Look what we have done to our town. The depletion of natural resources has been a result of our selfishness and cruelty towards our Mother Nature. How do we deal with nature’s wrath now? The sudden outburst of the water desperately looking for an outlet is resulting in loss and destruction.’ Umesh uncle, who was already present there, spoke first loudly, his voice heavy with concern, rising above the rumble that was going on outside, eyes glistening with tears in the faint light coming from the only candle in the room.
‘It’s probably the worst flood ever to hit the town area. I am from the southern part of the town. The raging, monstrous current from the Yamuna has already started flowing into the residential areas and moved inside the ground floor of the houses, submerging the roads.’ Ravi broke in hurriedly, panting for breath, still wearing wet clothes that had perhaps partially dried.
‘It’s all because we have lost faith in God and have stopped praying diligently.’ Vrindavan uncle wailed. The candlelight fell on his imploring, pale face.
‘The school is just like Govardhan Parvat.’ My father said after pausing for a moment. ‘It’s protecting us from the flood water.’ He narrated the story of Lord Krishna lifting Govardhan Parvat on his little finger.
Once villagers of Braj (a region in Uttar Pradesh, around Mathura–Vrindavan) were planning for the puja of Lord Indra (god of thunder) so that he would continue to provide rain. Krishna convinced the villagers that they need not conduct sacrifices or perform pujas for any natural phenomenon. Instead, they should worship Mount Govardhan, whose fertile soil had provided the grass upon which the cows and bulls grazed, and honour the livestock who provided milk and ploughed the land for agriculture. On hearing that, Indra got enraged and ordered clouds of devastation to lash upon the land, causing incessant rain and thunderstorms, resulting in extensive floods that would destroy the livelihood of the villagers. Krishna protected them from the calamity and lifted Mount Govardhan on his little finger for seven days and seven nights while the entire village took shelter under the hill and remained safe from the storm. On realising his mistake, Indra called back the clouds. The sky became clear once again.
‘God is present in nature, in the soil, trees, plants, flowers, fruits and animals. So we should worship and take care of nature, who provides all the essential things that are required for sustaining life.’ My father said woefully, then stopped listening intently to something, as if nature’s laments, its voices of persuasion and requests to wake up before everything ends for all of us.
At last, when the storm subsided—after filling us up with dread and turmoil and leaving us cold and lifeless throughout the night—and the rain abated, it was early morning. By then, the flood water had receded. Though subdued in a paroxysm of grief that my wedding was called off, I was somewhat relieved that it rained at last. It was as if God had preordained to stop my marriage to teach me and my family something about Mother Nature. Perhaps it was a hint at the burgeoning population that was exploding and exploiting natural resources mindlessly, bereft of gratitude—with megalomaniacal greed of a monster and ignorance of an animal. It needed to stop—I didn’t know how, when, perhaps we knew where, but it had to cease.
Disheartened, I decided to return to my daily activities when I heard a car pull over on the road outside the school. Around three or four people descended, and among them was Urmilla, with whom I was supposed to get married.
What happened after that was more like a dream. We got married in the nearby temple. Along with our marriage vows, we took an oath that we would take care of our environment, as we were indissolubly connected, and do everything possible to preserve our Mother Nature before the opportunity passed.
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