As the summer advances, the heat is unbearable, and the earth is sizzling. When the humidity is high, and breeze feeble, even moonlight stings; and the night is spent rolling on the bed with little sleep if any. Bedrooms are abuzz with fans whirling at high speed and air-conditioners gurgling through the night. I dread this ‘blistering bake’ and often recall the summers of the bygone years.
The government has already declared ‘water emergency’ pointing to fast depleting water levels in our state’s water reservoirs. People must realise the importance of water and learn to use it judiciously and responsibly. Water though potentially renewable, pollution and wastage can seriously undermine its availability and utility. I’ve travelled through the Thar desert witnessing the hardship faced by the people there. Amidst salt-encrusted ground, scorching heat and mirage, the women walk for miles carrying pots on their head looking for water, and there is little available.
I’ve visited the eco-tribes of Rajasthan in whose homes leaving even little drinking water in the glass is considered impolite and errant. In this weather the greatest paradox is that the water is scarce, and thirst acute!
In our rental room in a chawl during my childhood in 60s, the roof and the walls had enough perforations to keep it aerated. Later, our apartment on the second floor close to the seashore, had ice-cold flooring of red-oxide coat. When the heat was intense, my father spread wet towels on the floor and slept over it. Often he’d take a midnight shower to cool himself.
Few neighbours had refrigerators and visiting them would guarantee a cold glass of ‘Rasna’ - a mango and kala khatta flavoured cold drink popular in middle-class homes of 80s and 90s. I loved looking at the frosted interiors of the fridge and stood close when someone opened the fridge, to receive the ice-cold breeze. My greatest incentive was when some kind aunty in the neighbourhood offered a plate of ice-cold grapes and watermelon slices.
Of course, the handcarts of variously coloured ice-fruit on a stick would appear in the colony and children would mob this source of salvation from heat, costing only 25 paise. Windows of my apartment would rarely be shut ensuring cross ventilation, rooms were not crowded with furniture ensuring indoor circulation. I’d spend my evenings on the shore through the summer holidays, walking through the crashing waves, the wet sinking sand and the receding sea water created a dizzy feeling.
My first experience of an airconditioned cinema theatre in Goa was somewhere in the summer of 1978. It was my mother’s elder brother Vishnu Sukhtankar who had just arrived home after many years from Lisbon, Portugal, took us all to the Samrat theatre in Panjim to see the Dharmendra and Jitendra starrer Bollywood movie ‘Dharam Veer’. The stereophonic sound and chilled AC interiors were a surreal experience for me, who until then had seen cinema only in cramped and somewhat filthy settings of El-Monte and Cine Vasco theatres.
During my school days till 1980, come summer and I’d run to my mother’s sister-- Gulab Lawande’s home in Cortalim. Their home is over 100 years old with tiled roof, a balcão facing the road and a sprawling courtyard. In the backyard, there was a well which didn’t dry up even during the summer. Every afternoon, I loved bathing at that well, drawing water myself. Pulling a copper pot with a rope across the pulley was an adventure and required strength. But emptying the entire pot of water on the head in one go was hugely refreshing.
Kids were taken to the Kesarval springs, a little further up on the slope leading to Verna Industrial Estate. The crystal-clear spring water then was cold, and a dip under the gaze of elders would feel rejuvenating. I also recall the ‘Panto’ canal of Jambaulim, where water was soothing and gave a sense of cleansing. Indeed, water has power of ablution and is considered sacred across faiths.
Summer accentuates water scarcity, and with climate change accelerating, this precious resource is progressively diminishing. The traditional mud-pitchers of our homes have been replaced by high-tech water filters. At the airports, we purchase exorbitantly priced bottled water supposedly filled from the Himalayan springs.
The rich and the affluent purchase Filico Jewellery water from Japan’s Nunobiki spring in Kobe, priced at one lakh and twenty thousand rupees a litre! It was only in late 1990 that Bisleri started promoting packaged drinking water claiming it to be pure and healthy. This convenience driven patronage of water though gave us the menace of plastic bottles.
However, we are still lucky that if our wells dry up and taps go barren, we can buy and store water. These days many dead birds are being encountered all over due to scorching heat; red-vented bulbuls, sparrows and munias being particularly vulnerable, but occasionally crows and kites too die of heat driven thirst.
Some of these dead birds are being brought in by my students with a sense of pain, loss and grief; a clear sign that compassion for life is not lost. My students and faculty got together crafting seed and water dispensers out of used plastic bottles that are hung at strategic locations for birds to get respite in this hostile season and have another chance at life.
In this season of extreme heat and water scarcity, if each one of us can fix a shallow earthen bird bath, as also water and seed dispensers in our balcony or backyards, at home, school and our workplace, the parched birds can quench their thirst and save their precious little lives.
