Holi and World Water day

About a month back there was notice pasted in all common areas of our housing society. The notice requested all the residents to not waste water as summers are approaching. Washing of cars through hose pipe was banned and it was suggested that the residents or their help use buckets to fill water to clean the cars. As a self professed green I was very happy to read this notice. I actually do not even get my car cleaned every week like most people I know but only once in a month as I have a really short commute daily and my car does not become that dirty ( subjective I guess). I strongly  believe in conserving water and the only  plants I grow in my balcony are cacti and succulents.

Then last week we had another notice in our lifts etc. that asked residents to play  Holi, the festival of colors only with organic dry colors and not waste any water. So I was once again very happy to see this proactive approach to save water.

I quickly ordered organic dry colors from an NGO I volunteer for ( www.rangde.org) and decided to play Holi after a long time.

To my disappointment when I reached downstairs to play Holi I found that not only every  body was playing holi with water, and colors none of the colors were organic. There were huge drums filled with colored water and residents were being thrown in them. I thought I will complain to the president of the society, to my total disbelief  Mr. President was  holding a huge  hosepipe and throwing water on the revelers, a DJ was  playing Bollywood songs of Holi and every body was dancing, including the office bearers of the society. I decided to watch the whole drama from a distance and realized this rain dance thing has been going on  for 2 hours and will continue for another 3 hours.

I am sure in the 5 hours of rain dance we would have wasted more water than used to wash cars for a whole year. The sad part is the very people who have appealed to not waste water were seen wasting it the maximum. This sad mimicry of most of the Bollywood movies rain dance sequence was not appropriate in my opinion in a city like Hyderabad which is perennially suffering from water shortage

The only logical explanation I have is that most of the water we use in our society is underground and we do not pay anything for the same, what a shame. Precious water being wasted for hours in order to celebrate holi? I don't think any body would have agreed to waste this water if it was paid for or we had ordered tankers after paying through nose for the tanker water.

All this 2 days before world water day, I guess this is one of the things that are hard to explain.

Water is a national resource and should not be wasted. I do not wish to lecture here but would strongly recommend that ground water should be billed to people who use it. In our housing society there is no bill for using water and it is part of the maintenance that we  pay to society.

This is the stupidest thing one can do, so since no body  is paying for water separately no body cares for the water. Would you imagine doing the same for electricity? No because each house is billed for the electricity used by them so we all use electricity judiciously, but not water as we do not pay for water separately so we are very happy  to waste it.

The day we start billing each flat for the water they use, all misuse of water will stop immediately. I wonder why we have not done it so far?

Thanks for reading, do leave a comment