What did numbers mean to them though! All they were grateful for was the shade of the hillock. Every evening, this little hillock gave the village an extra twenty or so minutes in the shade. A nearby village not so fortunately placed was even hotter, they had heard. Not that it mattered.
Now they could perform their daily activities under the erratic street-lights.
New street-lights and electric lines had been installed recently, by either some state agency sporting a hand symbol or a distant one from Delhi sporting a lotus. It made no difference – the current was not dependable and they needed water now, not light. No lotuses bloomed here. The last lake had run dry months ago and the local wells, several dug on the beds of the dried lakes, were all that provided water.
The sun sank further and Doddanna was glad. His little coffee and vada shop saw most customers this time of the day. The coffee was limited though. The decoction was made with what water he could get after the rationed water was used for his family’s drinking and washing purposes.
He knew the statistics well. Some weeks ago, some important looking people had come in cars with little red lights on top of them and done a little counting before pronouncing the obvious – the wells won’t last. 27 days with rationing was how long it would last. The folks with the TV had told them good rains were to be expected this year. But the rains were still 33 days away, give or take a couple. Usually take.
Without much formal education, Doddanna was a scholar in native literature. He’d pored over pages and pages of religious and spiritual texts over a life-time of waiting for coffee thirsty people. His gurus and sadhus had told him of how humans were above all other animals for the one reason – the ability to look at the big picture. Instant gratification was secondary to long-term gains for this great species, they said. Doddanna wondered.
What if the villagers were given a day of free usage of all the wells? The landlord and the priest did that anyway – they were for mysterious reasons exempt from the ration.
Would the natives swarm all over the wells with every bucket they could lay their hands on or would they, all these people who knew how bad the situation was and the consequences – the elders had seen at least 5 droughts – see the bigger picture and ration the water amongst themselves? Was the promise of bountiful water in the near future a bigger reward than one day of sufficient water? He thought he knew the answer and smiled inwardly.
Everyone thought they did, but they all had different answers. The well would last about a week if they were given a free run, he estimated.
The sun setting was an interesting time. It provided respite from the crippling heat, a good 12 hours of respite. The next day would be the same, the rush for the wells, the quarreling, the accusations, the haul back, the crest-fallen weeping of the one lady (always lady) who in her earnestness spills one or both of the two buckets of water she was allowed, the clamour for the landlord to be stopped as his servants filled bucket after bucket of water and simply disappeared.
The rains had failed for three years now. The first year, the TV folk had said clearly there was to be lesser rainfall. And their words proved right. It did rain a bit though, and it was enough to get by until the next year, when good rains were promised. The monsoon started off with a boom before suddenly, the rains stopped. Even the TV folk were clueless on how it happened – in other states it had rained well.
The prediction for the previous year had been unequivocal – there shall be no rain. And everyone knew what less rain meant the next summer – scorching temperatures. People had been prepared for this moment but until it happened, the gravity was underestimated. Doddanna himself had been rationing the using of his personal well for nearly three months now but it too was almost dry. When there was enough water for about three days, he decided to start using the village well and revert to his own well when that ran out too. It was not a master-plan but it was all he could do.
Now with the new bulletin promising copious rains, the men had already taken to readying their fields. Doddanna himself felt it was wiser to wait for the rains and then begin the toil rather than risk all the labour in the pulsing heat to go to waste in case the rains failed.
The spirit was something else in those men who put their hearts ahead of their heads though. They worked with their little pittance of water, for both field and themselves, and completely thrusting their lives into the hands of the merciless rain-gods.
Doddanna was a godly man, and if the scriptures had taught him anything, it was to trust yourself rather than the gods. The gods, in his books, were mere account keepers and overseers, not the meddlers that most people believed them to be. All the prayers and all the sacrifices would not convince this god to give rain to one particular village only – you took your course while god took his. If he existed. God was a bigger picture man, in the image of the dominant species of the world he watched over.
The sun had set completely. The day that the wells ran out was one day closer. And the day that the heavens opened up was also one day closer. Doddanna hoped that the latter happened before the former but right now, all everyone was thinking about was the 11 hours of respite from the heat left.