Drops of life

“It is life, I think, to watch the water. A man can learn so many things.”
― Nicholas Sparks

There's no water. The overhead tanks were being repaired. By the end of the day even the lone bucketful was depleted and only a couple of jugs could be filled. The jugs became a symbol of all that a daily routine, and life, represents. I became suddenly aware of even drops being wasted.

Strangely, I also became conscious of sweat. In this humidity there can be embarrassing perspiration. However, I'd let the beads of sweat remain on skin; it's as though they were replacing water.

Bath was a towel dipped in water to clean up, followed by lots of wet wipes. If you can't have bread...; the awareness of being elite comes soft-footed. It comes as bottled water and as images that make you cringe, even if momentarily, about the many who walk miles to get just one bucket, about those who have to pull and tug into wells, who have to wait before water taps in a queue, who collect water near rivers where flotsam coats the liquid, who bathe in any collected pool of muddy water, who sometimes die because their thirst was unquenched.

These are images for us. For them, it is life.

Sunday ka Funda

"''Home' is any four walls that enclose the right person."

- Helen Rowland

I like the tagline: "Har ghar kuchch kehta hai" (every house speaks). For a paint ad, this seems like an obvious choice. But how often do homes talk or convey anything?

This ad in some ways is all about stereotypes — the armyman's discipline and the woman leaving her maternal home. While the emotions are subtly conveyed, through his concern for decorating the bedroom like the one in her house, a mere replication does not take a relationship forward.

Nitpicking aside, the words and feelings stay with you.

"Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are."

- Arsene Houssaye