If there is one thing I learned in India, it's that water is a heavy blessing. As is the case in most developing countries, India's tap water is questionable at best. Even many of the local people didn't drink it. For instance, during most of my home stays, families had big jugs of water that they bought and used for drinking. In our apartment we were lucky enough to have an Aquaguard water filter that we could use to fill up our bottles instead of having to buy water all the time. The downfall to that was the filter only worked between 7:30 and 8:00 and only when the power was on. Our apartment ran on generator, but big things (the fridge, the washer, the water filter) wouldn't run on just the generator. So at best, we had an hour a day to fill our bottles and the large jugs on our kitchen counter, but if the power was out during that time or if we weren't in the apartment, we didn't get to fill up. Sometimes we went several days without getting the opportunity to refill the jugs on the counter and they would go completely empty.
Furthermore, water is just plain heavy. Because we couldn't drink water from many places, my friends and I were never without our water bottles. Some people had reusable ones, I just bought a giant plastic one and reused it (even though it's supposed to be disposable) for longer than I care to admit. Either way, the burden of carrying around our water supply was no small thing. I can tell you right now: Water. Is. Heavy.
I carried around my tote bag with me most days because I tried to be really prepared at all times. Some days I carried several folders, notebooks, and even my laptop around for several hours of walking about the city. It could get pretty wearisome. Other days, I had almost nothing to carry with me. But my bag was never light because of my ever-present water bottle. On the rare occasion that I didn't have my water bottle, I was always surprised by how unburdened I felt, but I was usually also thirsty.
Around our kitchen, we posted many different facts about water, water shortage, and water consumption all over the world (none of which I can recall off the top of my head now...). Often we just walked past them, but when we actually stopped to read them or look at them, it always put into perspective how lucky we were to even get filtered, clean water for as much as an hour a day right in our own apartment. And that's saying nothing of the luxury of American water consumption.
These are all just water struggles that I dealt with personally in my life in India; the average Indian has even more water related problems than I did. One of the biggest issues for many Indians in terms of health and hygiene is contamination of water that floods into their lives during monsoon season. In Elgi slum people's homes are flooded every year by a body of water they lived on the banks of, but which they still continue to use as a garbage dump along with a hospital down the street. Even in bigger cities like Mumbai, water drainage isn't properly addressed and the streets flood every year causing rashes and other diseases.
Water can be both a blessing and a curse, but either way it is heavy. In America, where one can go almost anywhere and count on access to clean and acceptable drinking water, usually for free, it is a blessing we usually take for granted. The fact that Americans consume so much bottled drinking water is outrageous and almost laughable considering the abundance of potable tap water we have available. One of my goals for life post-India is to not drink any bottled water (this also addresses the issue of how much unnecessary plastic waste we produce as a culture; something else that I became alarmed of while in India). This was something that I tried to do even before I left, but after seeing the water problems that people face there, the point has been made even more clearly that water America's water consumption is embarrassingly extravagant. Feel free to do your part by drinking tap water, taking short showers, and being generally mindful of all the water you use and waste in your daily life.
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| The Ganges River, containing some of the most famously disgusting water ever. And yet, it's ritually pure. |
Furthermore, water is just plain heavy. Because we couldn't drink water from many places, my friends and I were never without our water bottles. Some people had reusable ones, I just bought a giant plastic one and reused it (even though it's supposed to be disposable) for longer than I care to admit. Either way, the burden of carrying around our water supply was no small thing. I can tell you right now: Water. Is. Heavy.
I carried around my tote bag with me most days because I tried to be really prepared at all times. Some days I carried several folders, notebooks, and even my laptop around for several hours of walking about the city. It could get pretty wearisome. Other days, I had almost nothing to carry with me. But my bag was never light because of my ever-present water bottle. On the rare occasion that I didn't have my water bottle, I was always surprised by how unburdened I felt, but I was usually also thirsty.
Around our kitchen, we posted many different facts about water, water shortage, and water consumption all over the world (none of which I can recall off the top of my head now...). Often we just walked past them, but when we actually stopped to read them or look at them, it always put into perspective how lucky we were to even get filtered, clean water for as much as an hour a day right in our own apartment. And that's saying nothing of the luxury of American water consumption.
These are all just water struggles that I dealt with personally in my life in India; the average Indian has even more water related problems than I did. One of the biggest issues for many Indians in terms of health and hygiene is contamination of water that floods into their lives during monsoon season. In Elgi slum people's homes are flooded every year by a body of water they lived on the banks of, but which they still continue to use as a garbage dump along with a hospital down the street. Even in bigger cities like Mumbai, water drainage isn't properly addressed and the streets flood every year causing rashes and other diseases.
Water can be both a blessing and a curse, but either way it is heavy. In America, where one can go almost anywhere and count on access to clean and acceptable drinking water, usually for free, it is a blessing we usually take for granted. The fact that Americans consume so much bottled drinking water is outrageous and almost laughable considering the abundance of potable tap water we have available. One of my goals for life post-India is to not drink any bottled water (this also addresses the issue of how much unnecessary plastic waste we produce as a culture; something else that I became alarmed of while in India). This was something that I tried to do even before I left, but after seeing the water problems that people face there, the point has been made even more clearly that water America's water consumption is embarrassingly extravagant. Feel free to do your part by drinking tap water, taking short showers, and being generally mindful of all the water you use and waste in your daily life.
As you know, water is pretty much the only beverage I drink. Thanks for reminding me how fortunate I am to have awesome-tasting tap water in my own home As a water lover, I will try to do my part to conserve the resource. Lots of love, ~mama
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