Save the Rivers! Save water

Yesterday and day before yesterday my social media handles viz. Facebook Twitter and even Whatspp Display pictures; were inundated with photos of people posing for the "Rally of Rivers" campaign, with people posing with the banner and blue coloured T-shirt.

I myself am a big fan "Sadhguru" and the "Isha Foundation" though I have not yet joined any of the Yoga courses initiated by them, but I do intend to do it sometime in near future. 

What I really want to find out is, how many of these people are actually following the very basic steps needed for saving water and hence rivers? Its not just a foundation's responsibility or some minister or teacher or officer or some NGO's duty to keep reminding us , and keep doing efforts to save the environment! We are all grown up people, who can be and should be held accountable for our actions - for good or for bad!
I've enjoyed (spent would be the wrong choice of word) in Rajkot which is an important city of the Kathiawaad(Saurashtra, Gujarat) region, and if I remember it exactly, way back in the early 90's, come February and we used to start to 'Purchase' water. YES!! This is not an exaggeration, people hailing from Kathiawaad, Saurashtra will very easily be able to relate to this huge expenditure! Every 3rd day a small "chakdo" would have to be called. It had this small motor for which the electricity connection was provided from our place and that pump, helped carry water from the "chakdo" to the water tank fixed on the first floor of our house. 

(Image courtesy - alamy.com)

As it is my parents have been super miser when it comes to spending water (Trust me they are the same till date!) And since we were purchasing water, it was all the more a compulsory thing to 'save water'.  Papa and Mamma had allotted - Brush - 1 tumbler, Bath - half bucket, water for gardening (strictly 1 bucket and mug had to be used), headbath twice a week and so on. And one could not make changes to that! And yes, if we saved water even 1 tumbler of water, we got incentives! And that was - lot of good words and statement 'yeh aadat aage jaake bahut kaam aayegi tum logon ko'

So here are a few basic steps that I do, and I feel everyone can do are 

1) Always carry your own water bottle (filled with water). Researches are going on at a large scale to prove that bottled water may contain traces of carcinogens, and despite of knowing that fact, we cannot give carcinogens as a gift to our loved ones...can WE?
2) Never keep the tap running especially while brushing your teeth or taking a bath/ The age old technique of using a tumbler or a bucket to do normal chores of washing and cleaning always works wonders in reducing per person water consumption. 
3) For cleaning the cars - provide your domestic help with a bucket and water instead of pipe which gives constant running water. A running pipe wastes a lot of water. 
4) Keep a big vessel in kitchen to wash vegetables, fruits and for miscellaneous chores. If possible put Potassium Permanganate to it, to remove the chemicals and pesticides. 
5) The water left in the glasses by the guests needs to go to the pots in the garden. The water left out after pochha also used to go to the garden, since using phenyl was not a norm everyday, instead rock salt was used.
6) A 5 minute shower uses up a whopping 25 litres of water, so if you like taking showers, maybe you could reduce the time spent, and use a fancy bucket and a mug and maybe add bath salt too, so that it doesn't look drab or uncool!

Currently I stay in an area where there is plenty of water supply, and at times I do feel like splurging and that's when I use a running water pipe in my garden!

Its not that I don't have a good water supply, but its just that I want atleast 24x7x365 water supply for my son and his gen next! As the native american proverb says: 

Hasta Pronto !