It was only last week that BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Council) officials were boasting that Mumbai’s reservoirs were all full, and that there would be no water cuts in the city this year.
My, what a difference a week makes!
Today, the BMC announced that the water levels in the city’s lakes are so low that a 10% water cut must be imposed immediately, from midnight tonight. It will continue until Mumbai receives enough rain to refill the lakes.
How astonishing that Mumbai’s reservoirs could go from full, to dangerously empty, within a week!
The BMC has also put significant effort into praising itself for getting all the city’s nullahs (canals) cleaned and de-silted before the monsoon arrives. VL Joshi, Chief Engineer, Storm Water Drain, said: “We are ready. Even if it floods during heavy rainfall, the rainwater will recede in two to three hours.”
What an impressive statement! Especially as it wasn’t long ago that the BMC was running around scaring people, by telling them to stay indoors or avoid being in Mumbai on 24 July 2009 (a day of anticipated historically high tide) because the city isn’t equipped to handle high tide and high rainfall at the same time.
Lets wait and see what happens. Every year the BMC lavishes praise on itself for completing the pre-monsoon work, and every year widespread flooding happens because the work hasn’t been carried out properly.
Just two weeks ago a colleague of the Mayor lashed out at the BMC for its shoddy job of cleaning the city’s nullahs. The colleague, who was conducting an inspection of the works, was so upset with the progress that he walked out in the middle of the tour. He claimed that the contractors only brought in their machinery, and pretended to be hard at work, when civic officials visited. The rest of the time they disappeared.
Over 10 million dollars is spent every year on carrying out this pre-monsoon work. The BMC says it will hand out fines to the contractors who do poor work. They won’t blacklist the contractors though, because then they’ll have to go through the time consuming process of appointing new ones. When the contractors are getting money for nothing anyway, a fine isn’t a bad prospect at all.
Ah, kyaa kare? (What to do?) Yeh hai Mumbai meri jaan.
Related Posts:
- Waiting for the Monsoon
- India Mystery #508: The Water Supply
- Monsoon Rain in Mumbai
- Dealing With Water Cuts in Mumbai
- The Arrival of the Monsoon in Mumbai
- 7 Dry Days in Mumbai this Month!
- Never a Dull Moment in Mumbai
- My Favourite Time of the Year in India
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Ok Sharrell….here is a water related question for you that Bear either ‘couldn’t’ answer for me or wasn’t sure HOW to answer for me.
In lots of pictures of Indian bathrooms (and even my friends here), there is almost always a water bucket.
What is the purpose of the water bucket? Is it to help save on water when taking a shower? Then why the bucket? Why don’t they build bathtubs? Is it too costly? It could do double duty (like my grandparents would use their for to save on water and electricity….my grandmother used it both for baths and washing clothes in…not the same water ok?).
Do people pour water into the bucket and then use it to rinse off after soaping and cleaning? Also…I always see what I guess is the “shower” area near the toilet in the bathrooms but no shower curtain or doors. Is there no separation? Do you just let the whole bathroom get soaked? How is it kept from getting moldy?
No…I am not freaking out before moving. Ok fine, maybe a little bit.
Seriously, just curious about this stuff.
The bucket is for use if you prefer it over the shower head system, or if the shower system is out (as it was when I visited my husband’s family house in Calcutta). You fill the bucket, and then use a cup to pour the water on you before & after soaping up. That was my first shower in India.
I think Maa prefers the bucket system to the overhead shower system, altho she will willingly use whatever is available.
The lack of a separation of a shower area is quite common in the homes of many Asian countries – that’s how it was in the majority of the Indian homes I visited. Since everything is tiled you don’t have to worry about mold, altho you should take precautions to keep the toilet paper (if there is any) from getting wet.
When I showered at Didi’s house for the first time I didn’t know that you had to turn on the water heater in the bathroom to get warm water. I thought the slightly-sun-warmed water was as hot as it got – took a few cold showers in the winter before the maid in the family realized that I was an idiot, and passed the word on to Didi to show me how to heat the water. Of course, it was a winter in Bombay, so I wasn’t suffering too much.
Everyone bathes with bucket and cup like described above. Moreover, we wash our clothes in buckets by hand too. The cups are of various sizes with handles that are made specifically for bathing purposes.
Bathtubs are too wasteful. You don’t need that much water to bathe and Indians would consider sitting in your own dirty water very, well, dirty.
We also flush our squat toilets down with buckets full of water. Buckets are also used to store water in case of an outage (often happens).
The average Indian household has plenty of buckets!
That answered my question about the buckets all though I kind of had feeling that is what they are used for. I think that I’m getting the monsoon here in PA because it’s been doing nothing but raining and t-storms here this week and part of last. you can feel the heat that it needs to rain.
Ah, the infamous Indian buckets! Aurora – you have made my day with your bucket questions! The funniest thing is that I wondered exactly the same thing when I came to India and was confronted with usually not just one, but multiple buckets of varying sizes in the bathroom (I’ll admit that we have three big ones in ours, as well as a couple of smaller “mugs”). I got very confused when I had to take a shower in an Indian bathroom for the first time because it was exactly as you describe – toilet, drain (which was just a small hole over the other side of the bathroom near the toilet), bucket, and overhead tap. I was very concerned about water going all over the bathroom floor so I just filled one bucket and kind of splashed around in it. Then I had no idea what to do with the water afterwards. It was very bewildering. The whole idea of bathing without running water feels quite strange, although the bucket method is quite satisfactory. Now using a small bucket for washing up after going to the loo is another different matter, which I was just as confused about and had to ask my husband for instructions!! lol. Turns out I was going about it all wrong.
You’ll find that it’s necessary to have a number of varying sized buckets in an Indian house. They really are indispensable. I’ve used them for washing clothes in (did that for 2 years), pouring water down the toilet to flush it (during times of water shortage – did that for 9 months), washing dishes in, as well as bathing in!
Even though we have a perfectly good shower in our apartment (and fortunately with the toilet separately) my husband until recently continued to bathe out of a bucket (he seems to prefer it too), well, actually two big ones. He would fill them with water, soap himself up, and then pour the water over himself with a smaller bucket. Except that he’d always end up leaving varying amounts of water in the big buckets — which is not good when there’s a mosquito problem, and I also use the buckets for hanging out laundry. Finally, I’ve convinced him to take a shower in the western way!
I find the fact that there’s no separation between shower and toilet in a lot of bathrooms very inconvenient. If you take a western shower, the whole bathroom (including the toilet) does tend to get wet. I guess that’s the benefit of bathing out of a bucket — no water splashing around!
Don’t worry too much Aurora. I won’t say that living in India doesn’t require adjustment (and if you’re like me, you’ll have soooo many questions as to why things are like they are. My husband usually isn’t very forthcoming with answers either!), but after a while it will all become normal to you!
Oh, and I still often forget to turn the hot water heater on in various bathrooms. (We have a nifty gas heater that automatically comes on to heat the flowing water when you turn on the hot tap).
I got pretty used to the bucket shower while we were in India, although Mummy’s apartment also has a western-style shower in it. I also got so that I preferred the “water method” instead of TP when using the toilet. It is much cleaner. In fact, when we have our own house, we plan to install either a bidet attachment on our toilet, or one of those spray nozzles attached.
You can keep a squeegee in your bathroom to get the water off the walls/floor, Aurora. They don’t stay wet very long!
Oh thank goodness for all of you being here to answer my toiletry questions! LOL
I find it absolutely hilarious, being a grown woman and having to learn a whole new way of going to the bathroom!
Actually…this has kind of inspired me for a new post to write!
When I was there for a month, I stayed in a ‘westernized’ hotel with lots of small rolls of TP, a shower with a glass door and some wicked looking sprayer thing next to the toilet that I thought was used for cleaning up the bathroom.
Till one day I asked my maid what it was for. She didn’t speak very much English, so she went to get my room steward. Who was a man. An Indian man. Whom I had to ask…
“What’s that sprayer for next to the toilet?”
To which he turned beet red and giggled the entire time he was explaining it to me.
I then spent the next three days happily spraying the walls, the toilet, the glass shower door, the mirror over the sink, my spare towels and every stitch of clothing I had on while trying to teach myself how to use that sprayer.
By the end of the month, I did prefer it although I never got over that wet feeling down below and would still dry off with TP or a towel afterwards. LOL
I already knew about the water heater thing…we had that in my grandparent’s house and Bear told me that we would have one that was automatic, but I had to make sure to turn it on first.
And he would tell me the buckets were for bathing but never could explain to me precisely HOW they were used to get all the soap off? Or perhaps it’s because we have such hard water/soft water and clingy soaps and shampoo’s that it takes an hour of hard spraying water to get it all off…and that won’t be an issue in India?
The ‘water everywhere’ concern was that…well here we mostly have linoleum floors or carpeted floors (sometimes treated hardwood) in the bathrooms. Rarely does an average family have the money to have real tiles put down in the bathroom. So if water builds, the linoleum will get wrecked. It starts to curl and peel and get nasty mold crap underneath. Also, the water on the ceiling and walls, if it’s not cleaned properly will get moldy. I guess it never struck me that the climate and conditions will be different there. There my bathroom is entirely covered in good tiles and there is a window in each bathroom. The heat will help dry everything…and there is always the squeegee’s. Hmmm it’s hard picture something when you’ve never used anything else before!
I’m a converted fan of the water method now too!! Although, I sometimes I don’t really appreciate having a wet bum.
I’m planning on writing a humorous survival guide for living in India, because there really is SO much to learn — and re-learn. It will cover everything from how to clean your bum, to how to fend off nosy Aunties!!!
Hey, what’s all this stuff about Bucket?
I use the bucket even in the USA. The Toilet Paper method combined with the water method (uahhhhhhhh!) is a lot betta!
Hahahahaha!
You can laugh all you want.
But the bucket rocks!