WWW

Honestly, I am a huge fan of internet (who’s not) and shall be thankful all my life to Dept. of Defense, US or Tim Burners Lee or even CERN (whoever invented it or claim to), but this is not an ode to World Wide Web. Rather, this curious incident took place during my stay in Gwalior and gave me an enlightening foretaste of what the future may have in store for us.

After a late night show of The Inglorious Bastards (on my laptop), my bed didn’t let me go early (any kind of sleep is becoming luxury to me, off late) and when I finally woke up thanks to constant yelling of my roommate, it was already 8, less than an hour to report on duty.

“Saale, uth jaa…the taps are running dry!” he screamed, almost into my ears.

I yawned as I pushed my head out of the quilt with effort and asked, “Is there a river nearby?”

His comb froze amidst his hair as he turned back and laughed aloud, “We are in a semi-arid desert and even the Chambal is 30 km away.” Clearly he had risen up early and got a naturally unfair advantage over me (and others).

After 5 more minutes of gargantuan effort, I finally managed to stand straight. Some 40-45 minutes were left to my reporting time. After 6 months at home, a water crisis was unanticipated for me.

“Why don’t they just switch on the motor?”

“Tried that already, the motor is down!!!”

Great, and it was supposed to be a Mechanical Engineering company. Why couldn’t they just call a machine freak from the workshop and have it repaired.

Being a KECian, this water crisis was definitely not new to me. But we always had this surplus of water in the gadera in college. I quickly went to bathroom and opened the tap in the bucket; it fizzled out in a couple of seconds. This certainly was a time to race my army of neurons.

I quickly went on the ground floor and brought the master key to the room locks. (My room was the only one occupied amongst 10 others on first floor; everyone else lived on ground floor) I opened all the rooms and tried to empty their taps of all the water that lay secure in pipe lines. 9 rooms and I had at last crammed up my bucket. But was this enough?

I took another spare bucket and went to see how everyone else was arranging theirs. It was a complete catastrophe for all my friends. Most were in a state of awe never having seen such crisis before. They lay sprawled on the sofa having resigned to the fate and watching TV. Some were busy writing applications of leave to the HRD. But the happiest were those who had risen early and had managed to have themselves dry-cleaned.

I dodged questions – if I had already arranged the water and where was I going looking for it. The garden outside seemed dry too having been stripped of its daily water feed. There was a tap on the hind side, veiled from the inquisitive eyes of young trainees. It was during a cricket match, that a six went stray and I discovered what that day could be a life savior.

I looked back behind my shoulder to check if I was being followed and hastily rushed to the tap. There certainly was some water in the line, but soon the tap started coughing and gave itself away. There was still quarter of a bucket left bare.

As I moved back in the hostel, a lot of stares followed me and even as their eyes were curiously (some jealously too) looking at the water in my bucket when all of a sudden my eyes found a treasure. There was a lot of water yet to be used…in the water filter. I poured more than half of the canter into my bucket, leaving some for the thirsty crows to throw pebbles in who were watching me, accusingly!

And within the next half an hour, I had done all the bath room activities including an additional shave! I was the cleanest, much to the dismay of my colleagues in the mess (I had to stuff up all the slices of bread that morning and rush).

The lessons of survival learnt in KEC prepared us for the hard life that awaits many of us. Sure it is going to be a tough battle but I am supremely confident that we are going to win this World War for Water…