SO, don’t get me wrong, but seriously it has become a funny issue.
A small story I would like to share here.
One day, out of laziness, I missed the morning classes, and went to bathe at about 10 o clock. That is the time when the maids of our hostel were supposed to clean all the washrooms and stuff. So, I am taking a shower (we’ll come to that later) and I notice a sudden decrease in the quantity of water. I thought that maybe the hostel water tanks have water supplies sufficient to make through the morning usage only!!!
Later on, it comes into picture, that the maids clean the washrooms in a very creative way. In the four washrooms (there are a total of five, the fifth one occupied by me) they had simply left the taps open, so the water would rebound and spread out in the entire 3 by 3 feet area, so they don’t have to perform the utterly tedious task of doing it themselves. The taps were open for at least 4 minutes straight, and who knows the same technique was used in all the eight hostels of our college!
And we talk about being one of the best engineering institutes in North India, and having the human resources to make our country a better place, etc etc etc, when we have things like these happening in front of our eyes!
And btw, do you know, that’s also how they water the plants in the big lawns, they just leave the hose open at one place so water would spread out on its own and they won’t have to do it manually, that’s when the sprinkler isn’t working.
The water, in fact, clogs in that selected area, and it kills the plants, for excessive amounts bocks the oxygen supplies.
I don’t feel THAT guilty here, for I closed the tap when the gardener wasn’t around to scold me :p
But that was just once, sadly.
Coming to the taking a shower part, I do have this guilt feeling about that, for I was told a shower consumes, or should we say, wastes, 16 liters of water per minute!!!
It’s an embarrassing figure I would say, but after all that cleaning techniques of theirs, I was thinking why should we be feeling guilty about taking our resources for granted when they are going to finish at perhaps the same time because of the so many tiny things happening every day every second in every corner of the world, and maybe, we would regret later, that we didn’t enjoy them when they WERE available!
But that was just a passing thought, we can’t justify our wrong doings by arguments such as those, and for a change I’m not going to go into philosophies.
Only a mention of a very innovative way Tushar had proposed, by using ice to save water
, I was quite impressed when he came up with that one, but what are a few ice cubes in front of liters of water wasted like that.
There are several other ways, like when you cook up pulses they have to be washed thoroughly first, and the water can be used for plants, since its rich in nutrients even.
A small point am proposing, if we want to make use of this “conservation” thing, so that my and your kids do get to see the earth the way it originally was (if that is, it survives till then) is to start form the VERY BASIC level, that includes telling our mommies and maids and everybody else about it also.
Yes, perhaps, we cannot go to an industrialist and tell him to use water judiciously in his factory, particularly when its available cheap and easy, but we can only hope for some day when he’ll wake up from his slumber upon seeing his 7 year old kid saving it!
