From pond to borewell

Water has also been traditionally worshipped in Tamil culture and placed at the centre of many rituals. In particular, farmers petitioned the rain deity Mariamman when they needed rain for their crops. “They thought they had done mistakes, which meant Mariamman did not give water, so they had to do a firewalk, as an apology, penance, punishment,” says Shankar. “It’s meaningful.”

Nowadays, the concept of the sacredness of water is a fading and abstract one that has not carried over into respect for water within daily practices. Shankar says the understanding was lost at the beginning of his generation, when borewells were introduced. “Before the first borewell was made in Kuilapalayam, people were happy with the pond and rainwater, but not now. The modern equipment was given to us, without telling us how the groundwater table is refilled. No one knows – they think it rains and it goes in directly. With borewells, people just switch on the motor. They think, ‘OK, water table going down’, and they send the pump a couple of metres further down. It’s really sad. Nowadays there is no respect.”

There are now about 30 private borewells in Kuilapalayam (a village of 340 houses), and the remaining houses depend on the street tap. Shankar points out that since people no longer have to fetch water from the pond, their attitudes towards usage and wastage have changed dramatically. They wash clothes when they are barely dirty, and use more water than

previously. ”Oh yeah, I touched the cloth! [He mimes washing]…For one lungi, they use 30 litres, three containers of water. First we apply soap and wash the cloth in one pot, and then another, and then another… So that is our style. You’d be amazed at the amount of water that drains out of houses and the whole village…”

Shankar supports the concept of access to water as a basic human right, but he says that the village has no ideas for conserving water. “I’m angry about it. In Kulaipalyam, there’s no concern. People pump it, make it dirty, then drain it away – what a sin! Only in Auroville I hear people saying “I wash something, and I use the water to flush my toilet”. No villagers say that. I get irritated. I saw in Sadhana Forest, you take a jar of water, wash your fingers with water dripping from just one jar, but wash well. But here in the village, people take two litres, and still hands are not clean. We have a problem.”

The children in Aikiyam School, where Shankar is the Principal, are taught how to conserve water when they wash their hands, and they also visit Sadhana Forest to learn about water conservation. However, this education and understanding doesn’t necessarily flow into the village homes. Shankar advances the idea of rationing water by charging people when they use more than five pots (100 litres) per person per day, in order to make them more conscious about wastage.

The village pond these days is kept for thirsty cows and has lost its focus as the hub of village life where people used to meet as they collected water and washed themselves. “I had to go there twice a day as a child,” says Shankar. ”That was the only source. I used to go with a huge aluminium pot, and we were hesitant to ask people to help us lift the full pot and put it on our heads. So I would roll my towel, put it on my head, put the pot on top, dip myself fully under the water with the pot, fill it, and then raise up and walk. I did this five times, and the last time I’d do it, I’d use soap to clean myself well. Then I’d take the last pot home.”

The pond still remains the village’s only water storage device, but Shankar claims the natural flow of water into the pond is now blocked because of the bunds built on higher land and villagers’ own ignorance about the topography and how to funnel and collect water.

And in the shift from the pond to the borewell, does the burden of fetching water still fall on women? “It hasn’t changed. Mostly women are doing it, and men are just using it. Some men go with the can to get AquaDyn drinking water [from Auroville], but other than that, water for the family is taken care of by the women. They have to get into the pit around the street tap and fetch water. It still happens.”

Shankar points out that villagers no longer grow their own food, and that the traditional crops of varagu and ragi – which don’t require much water – are no longer grown on village land. Even the owners of cashew fields lease the land to others to harvest, and undertake other business activities themselves, such as running taxis. “This village was producing and selling so much food! My father produced a minimum of 50-60 bags, quintals of kombu, and 50 bags of ragi and sesame seeds… My father never ate food from outside. Varagu can easily grow through drought, and so can sesame and ragi. We used to make our own oil, from our own sesame seeds and peanuts. And now everyone buys packets of sunflower oil, which is really petrochemical. Everyone has cholesterol.”

Part of the village resistance to growing and eating traditional grains is that such food is regarded as “low status”, therefore villagers aspire to eat polished white rice as an expression of upward social mobility. “If I drink ragi porridge, people say, ‘Oh you don’t even have money to spend on food’ even though it is very healthy!”, exclaims Shankar. As a solution, he suggests that each village collectively grows traditional grains on land irrigated by the village pond, but he concedes that villagers “don’t care about it.”

Can the concept of water as sacred be leveraged for educational purposes amongst villagers? ”The word ‘sacred’, we have lost it in our daily life. Sacredness is a concept that Tamil culture knew but the very word is ignored by people these days, it’s not in our practice. Religiously, we have to see that this pond is respected this way… We need to create awareness in the village.”

Although water doesn’t hold the same sacred status as it did previously, it is still central to village rituals. In order to start the annual Kuilapalayam festival, villagers go to the pond to invoke Mariamman. “They believe the water force can get into somebody and the person goes into trance and communicates with Mariamman. They say: ‘This year we want to celebrate our festival – will we get permission from you?’ The person in trance conveys the permission, and then they start. In Edayanachavady in summer time, they do a celebration where they pour hot chilli on their bodies and drink chilli, which creates burning… These are the ways of telling the goddess: ‘Please, give us water, we need it in order to do our cultivation, to grow our food’.”