DRINKING WATER..

I dont know why water, the drinking water has been on my mind these days. So I begin with an urdu couplet, a she'r :

मेरे देश की मिटटी मुझे यहीं एडियाँ रगड़ने दे ,
मुझे यकीं है की पानी यहीं से निकलेगा .

Ironic, is'nt it ? The faith, the yakeen thing, is something we just can't live without। Just the other day I witnessed people coming to blows when this tanker of water arrived to supply drinking water to this mohalla।The women too were hitting the driver of the tanker who drove to the adjoining mohalla and supplied them with 'extra tanker' because they had bribed him. Obviously he fled from the scene and in the ensuing 'rush for water' many many litres of water was wasted, And I recalled what Kofi Anan said a few weeks before retiring from the UN that :



" In the 21 st century the next world war will be fought over water, water resources".

With Ganga Maiyya reduced to a sewer, Jamuna having become a filth gatherer, other rivers blocked by mega dams, soon our gods and goddesses inside millions of our temples will have to go without their daily ritualistic bath. This pujari ji was telling me the other day, "Bhagwan ji ko hum roz 11 balti paani se snaan karwate hai ji aur Gau Mata ko 2 balti se".And when I asked, "aap kitni balti se snaan karte hai"? He just smiled as if to tell me he does'nt care about his teeth.
Thank God our Sikh bretheren do not have to do all this. Thank God our muslim brothers do not have to all this.Thank God our Christian brothers do not have to do all this.The Arya Samaji's,The Jaini's, The Valmiki's, etc. etc. must be saving millions of litres of drinking water.
Am I being biased? Am I being disrespectful to The Hindu Dharma??
No...not at all.Because I am 'too afraid' of our bajrangi's, and many other such zealots.
In my school days we were told that our ever increasing population is one of the biggest problems.Three decades later I see that Pepsi, Coke and bottled water has reached our villages, the very outback of our nation. But if you are looking for a condom there, you just don't get it.
I am not going to blah blah about the depleted, polluted underground water, our acquifers. I am not going to tell you why "safeda tree plantation" was undertaken in north India a few decades ago but this much I need to tell you that safeda is a water guzzler. All one need to do is to go into the fields where safeda trees outline their boundry.
Just watch that there is nothing growing (nothing can grow) within a radius of 5 to 6 meters beneath a safeda tree. It just sucks all the underground water and lets nothing else grow.
चलो हिसाब लगायें ...अगर हर खेत की सिर्फ़ 10 मीटर जगह पर कुछ नही उगा और यदि पंजाब/हरयाणा में सिर्फ़ 10 लाख (ही) किसान हैं तो कितनी ज़मीन,कितनी फसल और कितना पानी बर्बाद हुआ ?
But I am being so stupid. ऐसा हो सकता है भला ? छड्डो जी ??
हमारे किसान भाई अपनी भैंसों, गायों अन्य जानवरों को तालाबों में नहलाते हैं. But we the urbanites go for car/scooter wash to service stations. We have our big and small gardens to water. The other day Times Of India reported that cities are fighting (?) with adjoining cities in MP....FOR WATER.
With mohallas and cities fighting for water, do we need any Kofi Bhai, to predict "water wars"?

PS.
when I was a young boy 30 years ago it needed 5 to 7 meters digging for a hand pump.And now it certainly is many more meters than my age.
CHEERS to water !!