These are the months of no rain here. Well, when did we last receive rains in the preceding several months? I can’t remember. It is heart rending to see our soil now. She is porous. She can’t hold water on top like other soils do. She is the greediest of the lot. Gulps water down like a desert. Our soil can’t survive without a sea of water every year.
We are in for a drought it seems.
No one is bothered.
Well anyway we are the great optimists around in the world. The god will bring rain the earth would collect it and we have just to tap it you know, and all would be well. Doesn’t the god have a responsibility towards us? But then would we visit the temples mosques and churches? That is superstition and we would have none of that. The times have changed Mr. God. We are much more intelligent than we were ever before. We accept you as a myth, a strange and interesting remnant of our past.
We are no more willing to knock our heads on the stone blocks to be blessed. The very thought of it ha!
Well whatever our affinity to god and nature are we seem to be in for it this time. We are crazy about water. We might be the only people in the world that takes a bath more than twice a day. It is not any bath that we take. Our sense of hygiene being fanatical we use up an entire piece of soap to get ourselves clean every time we bathe.
You think it is limited to the city folks in the state? (There are no real cities in Kerala other than perhaps the twin ones of Cochi and Ernakulam; all the others are just overgrown villages.). Well no my good friend no. The urban population might find it hard to get enough water inside their flats and their congested living environment. Naturally they would be the more dirty ones in this blessed state.
We who reside in the villages or in the suburban areas really go for it. We are the guys who use up soaps by the truckloads every day. If possible we would bathe thrice everyday. How do we brush? Brother can you brush without at least twenty liters of water! Impossible, what friend you are not washing you truth brush are you are BruSHing your teeth. Incidentally we follow the way they brush in the commercials on dental hygiene. We squeeze the entire tube on to the brush and
“zlinkh of zla nize fleelinglglgl whehnj ju ju itch. Hlu hlu hlum.”
(“Think of the nice feeling when you do it”. The rest is gurgling as the discerning might guess intuitively)
We wash our hands and feet and face when we go out and when we come in. Mostly these are elaborate rituals with soaps scrapping and rubbing involved. And unlike in the west we don’t use toilet papers when we go to the loo. We use one gallon heavy duty water for the purpose every single instance. Should not be untidy what!
Imagine us in a desert. We would die of the sheer horror of not seeing water anywhere. There are 44 rivers in this state and hundreds of lakes, tanks ponds and wells in this long thin strip of land. (All are presently drying up). Because of the tremendous acumen we display in these matters we allow every river to take away the water to the Arabian Sea. Water management? Does any one manage water as we do?
We need six months of rain in this land. If we don’t get it we are cooked. Still our wonderful earth would look resplendent. Trees would be green, the grass would be green, and the minds of every one who visits the land would be also green- with envy that is. Yet we would be in the clutches of the drought.
We still foolishly believe that the rains would come. It is not a belief based on factual evidences, it is a feeling, it’s a hope.
But such optimism and bravado is not going to save us this time. We are totally dependant on Hydel power in this long strip of land. We have already power cuts in here because the water level have gone down in the major dams.( birth rates are going to be on the increase, for what are we to do in the half hour blackout we gets every night at a very sloppy time.? There is the question of recreation you know.
Being very progressive we never would allow thermal, nuclear power stations in the strip of land. Instead we are ready to purchase power from other sates and the central grid for killing amounts of money. The one good thing is we do not have any industry other than the domestic baby producing industry to worry about. This later “industry” does not require power as some know.
I do not know what is happening in this land. We are a dependant people with no agriculture and Industry to bring in money. The only source of our income is our poor darlings working in the Arabian Gulf and elsewhere in the world. What if that source dries up?
A high literacy rate and birth rate a low death rate, a doctor for every 50 people ( and two engineers for every single citizen some say!) with no real financial structure to support it up well this is the most strange form of development in the whole world.
I pray for this foolish people that there be rain in the land, with all the pride and arrogance and aggression of my people they are just a bunch of idiots, without any ideas about future or even the present. We are sitting on a powder keg. None seems to have realized it even now.
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