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Showing posts with label water. Show all posts
Showing posts with label water. Show all posts

Saturday, September 2, 2017

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 !

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Mumbai floods - 1




Was just zapping through News Channels when all I could see about the rainy season was..Rain Rain everywhere! Floods at some places and No Rain at some.

That reminded me of the time when I was in Mumbai and Mumbai faced its worst ever flood - 26th July 2005.
     I worked as a Trainee Dietician at Radha Krishna Hospitality Services (Now taken over by SODEXO) at Lilavati Hospital. Like everyday I left my hostel at 5:30 am to catch my Bus No 86, got down at Bandra, got into the same rickshaw I used everyday and reached the hospital by 6:15am.
     The daily routine started: Preparing Kitchen order tickets (popularly known as KOTs), standing near the conveyor belt to send trays to the rooms; If I am remembering it correctly there were about 200 Patients on that day.
    In the meantime my other colleagues Gauri (my boss) Tejal, Nilofar, Shikha and Dutta arrived, and with every person arriving the only thing we would discuss was: It's raining heavily, this road is filled with knee deep water, that road is filled with knee deep water.
Gauri my boss came at about 11am and as usual was planning to leave early and she actually left at about 3:45pm.
     The first time she went downstairs she came back saying that roads are filled with knee deep waters, I'll wait for some time and then go. She was all set with everything ready and within next half an hour she again headed to leave but was sent back by the security stating: Madam its not safe to go water levels are increasing..She again came back..
      I swear I was so happy that she had to come back, every other day she would have to leave early due to some reason or the other and she made me sit for few more hours almost daily :P
    Then it was my time to go both theoretically and practically, so as I was preparing to leave, we got the information that all roads near the hospital are covered in more than waist deep waters and that no employee should go out of the hospital for safety reasons. I took a deep breath and continued with the work.
And then the fact dawned on all of us that: Okay..... We Are Caught in a Flood and We Will Have To Stay Back!
     In the meanwhile all of us started receiving calls from our homes and my, Shikha and Dutta's parents were all panicky....... reasons 1)Courtesy: News Channels which showed horrifying scenes of the flood 2) Because they we were in a different city and too far from them. We were instructed to switch off our cellphones so that we can save on the battery life.
    After our Dinner we went out in the lobby of 4th floor. 4th floor consisted of Kitchen and Doctors dining area and the staff's dining area.
    And the scene that we saw from there was scary...very scary..
all we could see was water water everywhere..cars stuck..with some cars almost covered in water and some covered till the windows..people standing in waist deep waters
   And it was then we realised that the we were in a problem and we really dint know what was ahead..
But I consider myself really blessed because I was stuck at a place which was clean hygienic, had access to electricity, food and almost all basic necessities..

With the work done for the day.... we all left for the dining room where the tables were cleared to make some place for 5 of us to sleep. We were provided with 4 blankets to sleep.
And as all of us lied down..the horror stories about the Hospital setup that circulated widely by word of mouth were now being told to us ..me, Shikha and Dutta.

For rest of the story wait for Part 2
Cya
Nidhi

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The world is small!

The world is small!

I’ve been a talkative kid right from my childhood..infact my mum says I started talking very clearly when I was 9 mnth old..:)Today as I sat in the office and saw the comments on my 1st Blog; somehow I got inspired to write more..Once when I was in 8th Std{(1996} I had been to the Post office to do Registered post, with my younger sis Chots (Ms Shrini Shukla) sitting on the back of my bicycle seat. Because of my talkative nature my mum always used to advise me whenever we both moved out ..this time also the same thing happened: “Anjaan logo se baat mat karna”,”Chupchap apna kaam karna aur aa jaana”, “Kisiko apne ghar ka address mat batana”etc..etc
When we were standing in the queue, me and my sis started arguing for small small things..(Letme tell you @ that time we were in Rajkot, a city where Hindi was not a language of conversation...even if you are Hindi speaking , you got to interact with the Gujarati people in Gujarati; therefore somehow all Hindi speaking people used to get happy when they heard anyone else speaking Hindi)

Seeing us speaking Hindi a lady aged between 20-25 yrs came to us and asked us: “Aap log Hindi bolte ho?” and we had a small chitchat. During this she told us that she had also come for a Registry and just because she was happy with us speaking Hindi, she asked us to come to her place.

Hold...that’s not what is surprising...what’s surprising is. . . I agreed to go with her
(inspite of my sis reminding me “Di mum told us not to do so”...and I was like,Chalta hai...acchi dikhti hai aunty.
And we went to her place..Her flat was in a colony just on our way, a bit in a secluded place...and when she opened the door..it seemed like an extremely old.. horror show type ka ghar...the worst part was the door creaked very badly while opening . Inspite of being Afternoon hours, it was near to pitch dark inside.
I was shocked and didn’t know how to react {After this somehow that aunty also started appearing like some Suspicious character to me}.
She very decently offered us water..Chots didn’t drink it; I somehow gulped it down my throat..and told her “Its late, you know we need to go”
While seeing us off She told us.."Beta, Apne Papa Mummy ko leke zaroor aana" but I was so damn terrified that without even looking back I nodded in affirmation and came back home...
I still remember the fast pace of my heartbeats when I was cycling back home..

After coming back..Mum didn’t ask us much  all the more better for us.

               After that day, I very often used to pass by that building (in which that aunty lived) because it was on my way to my tution classes and stationary shops..although I never ever dared to go back to that flat of hers...but the thought of that lady always kept lingering in my mind.

End of part One of the story  For part Two keep waiting..