My name is water. The need to introduce myself are many and in the current context in Chennai, most urgent. This is because my nom de plume has been torn asunder for no fault of mine and despite my intentions being honourable from time immemorial.
My name is water. I will keep repeating this till you all, meaning humans, get to really know and understand who and what I am and not go by what you see in your vicinity and what is shown and reported by media. This is at once an expression of predicaments, protest, prognosis, prescriptions and finally, a profound proclamation.
My name is water. Science and scripture agree I am the primordial element of origin as also the harbinger of end of days, variously described as the great deluge or Pralaya, when I engulf the entire creation or intelligent designs, take your pick. Life started in me and will end in me. Indeed, where I am, there is life. Small wonder scientists and seers are searching for me in various planets like even the fiery red Mars and beyond to find out if I am around to ascertain if there are beings/neighbours out there.
My name is water. Let’s get down to Earth. Please Google to get full facts about me. Point is though I form more than two thirds of the globe, my utility to you is a very paltry quantity and yet how badly you treat precious me! I am egalitarian, the great leveller. I am the sustainer, as part of all your routines and very secular in this divided world, being intrinsic in all religious rituals. I am essential for all your ablutions; but while I clean you, you make me dirty.
My name is water. I shall now keep my trumpet aside. Let’s get further down to Chennai that was Madras, a city perennially at war with me, rain or shine. For you, the denizens of this hallowed Southern coastal outpost of India that is Bharat, I am either the elusive damsel who put you in parched distress or a tormentor who pours in torrents to make you sink and stink, while all you seek is a little to drink. But pray, how I am responsible for this. Here goes my plaint.
My name is water. I am God’s blessings to you that you beseech so fervently, Mother nature’s bounty, though I agree her generosity in giving me is in sudden, short, sporadic and spaced out spurts. Ah, sudden, no longer. A Tamil proverb says that Peacocks can sense oncoming rains. Astrological Panchangs have done that very precisely. Modern astronomy gives enough warnings of my impending, er, down fall, which is what you have made of me. So how prepared have you been to preserve, conserve, reserve and serve me? Indeed, I am proof of your criminal negligence and resource’less’ness!
My name is water. Just this new millennia Chennai has recorded three of the highest rains in 73 years. 2015 and now are immediate visual memories. I was in full flow and yet, with all your much touted modern engineering capabilities, I was frittered away like filth. I was enough to last decades, but you could not stand me for a day! This is how you dug your watery graves:
*There is so much of infrastructure work going on for years. My arrival was predicted, plus or minus a few hours, while you, meaning your elected government too, had adequate time, plus or minus months, to plan for my smooth and safe movement. Yet you were caught napping and instead snapping your middle finger, no that is gross, index finger, at me.
*You prevented me from grazing even the top of the water table, let alone the deeps, by covering your paths and platforms with ritzy concrete, though, temporarily. With no way to go I occupied them.
*You built homes and highrises in my habitats. I had no choice but to knock at your doors and even reach up to your windows as I brimmeth over to grab my land back.
*I make about 70% of human weight. Since each of you is a, hmm, ‘water body’ yourself, may I ask what happened to all the water bodies in the city? Nungambakkam lake area is now full of residences and commercial hubs, not to speak of Thiruvalluvar’s own kottam. In West Mambalam, there is a Lake View Road but no lake to view at. Porur, a lake, is now full of nagars. Velacheri, Veperi and so many other eris (lakes) and marshes are thriving and throbbing Chennai upmarket neighbourhoods. Even some of the familiar localities in Chennai like Triplicane, Retteri, Ekkatuthangal, Madipakkam till recently were ‘under’ me. I entered to reclaim my domain even if you had to exit.
* Electrocution and power failures are due to the failure of the powers that be and not my doing.
*The clouds release me, pristine and pure. But once I enter your atmosphere the pollution darkens me. Still, I come to you chaste only to be sullied by the slush and sewage that you happily surround yourself with. I fall on garbage, gutters and gargantuan piles of construction waste, my virginity spoiled and soiled by your lusty greed and lack of civic sense as well as common sense.
*Adyar and Cooum were once resplendent wide waterways running through the city, replenishing it with ample ground water as well as offering scenic rides to the sea. As the slums and elite alike bankrupted their banks over the years with officialdom turning a blind eye, rendering these lifelines narrow ribbons of drainage, I perforce breached or broke over the low brink. It used to be only Kotturpuram in the Eighties with me visiting upto four or five floors; But after decades of ‘town planning’, more and more areas are like sinking Venice, though not so nice!
Lest I forget, my name is water. And the above are just some of your self-inflicted sins. Yet you have the gall to invoke all the foul adjectives, the worst invectives in all languages. Mankind’s unkindest cuts are for me; flooding, stagnation, inundation, marooned … all because of innocent, humane me! Alas, and all along it is really me who is trapped in and choked by this horror city with no way to go, unable to reach my destination, the Bay of B, with every escape route blocked by the deeds of you wretched beings. Small wonder, like you, but for the opposite reason, I am also tempted to look up to the Sun to suck me up from this God-forsaken surface. My friend wind, Vayu, somehow vanishes unseen without a fingerprint, but it is always poor me, Varuna, who is caught with the telltale watermarks!
My name is water. Chennai apart, it is no better in the rest of TN. Classical Tamil calls me benign Thanneer. But in this tipsy Tasmac Nadu I am synonymous to killer thanni, imbibed in gallons by its thirsty kudimagans.
My name is water. In a land that revers its rivers as the feminine Shakthi, TN’s most profitable industry is sand mining with political quarrying mafias carving up the already scanty waterbeds: this one is mine, ok, then that one is mine! When all is really mine! Ditto wherever there is a sizeable sheet of me. And where I do flow, factories dump their toxins into my womb, not to speak of sundry novel ways to ravage me.
My name is water. My bounty has brought beauty to this great land of lush meadows, plush mountains, fertile fields, lovely deltas, immense forests, meandering rivers, great falls and so much, not to mention the confluence of three seas. Indeed, TN is my land. How I long to continue to nourish it and in turn flourish here. But how long can I give when I am not respected or retained and instead rejected and refused even elementary attention?
My name is water. Poet Kannadasan answers. In a melancholic mood he writes that the raindrop is nature’s tear. He goes on to say that when nature cries the world will prosper. And how right. Humans will be humans. But I am what I am, copious and compassionate as the clouds that bear me, ever ready to shower my blessings, take it or leave it.
And till I come again as another bout of rain, ever yours.
Water, My Name.
