To be specific, my shower ran out of water just after I had lathered conditioner into my hair. Nothing feels as impotent as one standing under a dry faucet, turning the handle as far as it goes, and still getting—silence. Not having hot water is a reality I’ve learned to deal with. Not having any water is a whole new ballgame.
Last year, apparently, the monsoon failed in India. Three or four months of what should have been constant rain turned out to be only a mild trickle. What’s worse, from October to July India can expect very little additional rainfall. What looks dry now will only get worse as the mercury climbs (and it will—soon, and quickly).
Life on the farm tends to get romanticized in America. Wide-open spaces and the frontier and all that. Even in the heart of Nebraska, no one expects to find rudimentary housing without running water. Driving through the state of Rajasthan between Delhi and Keoladeo National Park, one can see huts made of water buffalo dung interspersed between fields of rice and sugarcane. Do people really live there? Probably. What do they do without the monsoon? We’re not in Kansas anymore.
Keoladeo itself paints an extreme picture of how strong the effects of drought can be. What once looked like this:
... now looks a little ... well, sparse:
Thousands of cranes used to come to the marshlands of Keoladeo in their yearly migration from Siberia. Now, almost none can be found. Man-made “islands” are simply hills in the middle of dry scrubland. Water has to be pumped in to keep the birds that live there year-round from being completely deprived of a habitat.
This isn’t to say that life is dreadful everywhere in India; quite the contrary, my own water shortage was probably caused by a broken water pump. Still, even after only one month my expectations about basic needs have been drastically changed. When more people live on the margins of society, there is lesser margin for error. Rajasthan is just one example of how vulnerable life is to running out of room.
This morning I solved my own problem by pouring the remains of my water bottle on my head. If sudsy hair is the worst of it, I have a lot more to be thankful for.
No comments:
Post a Comment