A ‘Bucketful of Kindness’ That Wasn’t!

The South African government announced the risk of “Day Zero” in the latter half of 2017. The residents of Cape Town faced the unprecedented prospect of having to turn off water supplies due to the worst drought in a century. To avoid the water crisis, citizens were limited to 50 litres of water per person per day.

Although the Day Zero hasn't yet arrived, water use is still restricted. And researchers still debate the sequence of events that led the region to the brink of crisis.

“[There was] the real chance of Cape Town being the first large metropolitan area in the world to run out of the water.” said Pedro Sousa of the University of Lisbon.

Vivek G, a fellow writer shared a short but fun story which captures the essence of water in our daily life. It isn’t your daily dose of romance but has everything to do with love… The love between friends!

Here you go –

There are a particular few summer-months that I often recall from over 20 years yonder, when I used to live with three flatmates in an apartment somewhere in a suburb south of Delhi.

The luck-forsaken three of them had far-off offices starting at 9 a.m., while mine only started at 10 and was just 5 minutes away.

Given into the obvious logistical imperatives, however, there was a tacit agreement in place. That I had to be the last to get up, not to be in the way while the three of them jostled around their turns at the morning rituals.

For the most part, it suited me as much as the others, in fact, more. But, as came the summers, the usual scarcity of water supply escalated on to peak.

One rather hot morning, by the time I got to it, the water from the supply as well as the common storage for the 4 floors of the building had all lasted from existence.

As elsewhere there wasn’t a drop to go by and the matters at hand were of profound urgency, I had no option but to divest the fridge of all the drinking water.

A lavish treatment, as it may sound in theory, in practice, it proved quite the opposite.

It was all quite a numbing business for the entire anatomy that got into the slightest of contact with that mineral H2O at glacial temperatures.

But, that aside, I faced that problem only for a day.

For, the next day onward, whenever I found all the water already out from the tap, I also found a bucketful lying about with very welcoming cool water in it.

It was, ever since the glacial morning, just always there in the time of need, without my having asked or even wished for it.

To me naturally, it was an act of sheer kindness on the part of my strikingly outstanding flatmates who put it there. Could have only come from the loving and caring bunch of friends that they obviously were.

A token of appreciation towards such kindness that I’d enjoyed for too many mornings of an entire season was only but due. In return hence, I too had silently covered the whole weekend-dinner tab, forever.

Needless to mention what else went into the tab, other than just plain dinner - a big deal to be afforded during those times when we had all just started out in our careers.

Soon, as time passed and destiny played through the vicissitudes of our individual lives, all of us got separated to different countries and cities, by the time the following year had rolled in.

As it always happens, times rolled by, but we kept in a fair amount of touch.

Many years later, as I was just casually following up on them recently, we discovered that the four of us were all incidentally to be in Delhi over the approaching weekend.

I insisted on a small party for ritualistically commemorating their bucketful of kindness.

In truth, the excuse was mostly meant as a worthy pretext for the party to look justified to the uninvited wives. To help things in favour of our small get together unhindered, and unalienated by their presence.

It was awfully nice, more than what we’d imagined when we met again. For we did not just get together.

For we re-did a list of crazy things after so many years – things that we had long surrendered to an unwelcome maturity, which was just deemed to have arrived with age. But we learned on this day that it had yet not arrived for us in truth.

Just as we were nearing the day’s climax though, a sudden revelation came my way. It had somehow triggered at that moment from three unexpectedly conscientious souls, who could no longer extend their deceit to a kindred spirit such as mine. So, it looked.

Or, at least that was how they put it before extricating this secret, from its prison of their collective knowledge for many-many years, out to me.

It’s quite possible though that alcohol not mixing too well with age, too, was at the time partly behind the hasty spurt in their conscience and honesty.

The truth unfolded a mystery that I had never known existed around my long-cherished bucket of water - a rather iconic bucket as far as I’m concerned. For it had even served anecdotally on occasions when I had used the story to impress upon the current generation, the value of unconditional love and care among friends.

Laid bare, the fact was simply that whoever was the first to open the tap during those summer mornings, couldn’t use a good first of the water because it was too hot.

Water, being such a scarce commodity in our situation as it was, no one had the heart to just let it run down the drain. Instead, it was let to run into one of the buckets, where, set aside, it always got cooled off by the time I got to it.

That revealed the history of the good old bucketful of my friends’ generosity was turning fast into a mere farce. And so was the wrapping-up of our so far so fabulous a day as well.

The abruptness of the silence that came with the news was grotesque, whereas the news itself wasn’t really so. To me, their guilt was for no good reason that mattered.

Not to let it ensue a wasteful gloom over us hence, I impulsively shelled out a generous barrage of well-minded obscenities at the three of them.

That thankfully brought normalcy back into the scene. Also, I had managed to find their act, of preserving a scarce resource such as water, even more appreciable than that of just storing it up for me.

I told them so, and it thankfully helped to reinstate them back to their fully cheerful state from before the revelation.

But then, as quite visceral an extension to what I was saying, came from me an un-meditated question, ‘So, you guys are still saving that bucket of hot running water during summers I presume?’.

The look on their faces could have put a guilty dog to shame - it was quite obvious that they weren’t.

Nothing else was said about water that day, or buckets for that matter.

But, somewhere, a serious realization had hit hard.

That probably being able to afford own houses and sufficient water to fill large overhead-tanks, the real value of water as a resource hasn’t become that pressing onto us, yet.

That, although we know that it turns scarcer by the day, we don’t indulge in the tiny little ways of saving and preserving it.

That it's senseless, the way we inexplicably await the day when the scarcity hits us so hard in the faces that it becomes disabling.

"Thousands have lived without love, not one without water." – W.H.Auden