Water bomb's ticking

We pack our children’s school bag, doubly ensuring that they do not leave behind the two essentials: the lunch bag and the water bottle. But do we carry a water bottle when we leave the house?  Why bother. All we have to do is part with Rs 12 or Rs 15, depending on the “brand” of pure water, and we get to quench our thirst in “convenient” plastic bottles, stocked in every corner shop in the country. Right? Wrong!

We need to bother as the bottles we use and throw are all out in its bio-non degradable form, choking our planet’s dump yard. Recently, my friend had sent a picture of a heritage site buried under a mound of plastic water bottles. That was just a fragment of the bigger time bomb merrily ticking away in our planet.

Will it be simpler to just fill up a bottle whenever we step out? Just our little bit. I have heard people say, what difference does it make if one person does it? What about the rest? Someone has to start somewhere.

This sounds pedagogical? Sorry, cannot help it.

Today, drinking water flow freely at large conclaves and conferences, small gatherings, fat weddings and  family functions through mini packaged plastic bottles. What is even more frustrating is when even quarter-used bottles are binned. This is double whammy: drinking water flows into the drain and more plastic is added to the planet.

Our fitness freaks run marathons, well-advertised and sponsored by corporates, and leave behind a monstrous clutter of plastic water sachets, making our planet that much more unfit.

The world water day is on March 22 to remind us of the resource that is getting scarily scarce. But we do not seem to just get it. We start rationing water when there is a red alert on scarcity. Once the dark cloud passes, we resume scrubbing vessels leaving the tap on. We do not tell our children not to turn on the tap during the process of brushing their teeth, but only to rinse. Our children have enough and more of television and ipods; they can do without the water music as they wake up or before they slip into slumber. We indulge in the Jacuzzi-type shower (like we see those jaw-dropping men and women in ads). We scrub and wash our cars like they are hitting a night club. We water the pathway like there was a storm the previous night. We mercilessly throw the water filled up in our buckets two days back when there would have been a water crisis warning, saying it is “old”.

The water bomb’s ticking;tick, tick, tick. It is time to wake up to this alarm.