Water Woes

Ray: There is no water
Me: What sort of water?
Ray: What do you mean? There's no water
Me: Tap water or drinking water?
Ray: There is no water coming out of the tap
Me: Try the butt hose… there is always water in the butt hose.

This is one of those conversations you could only have in India. Back home in Australia, free flowing water coming straight from the tap that is clear and drinkable and never runs dry is something we take for granted. In India things are a little different. In Delhi most dwellings have black water tanks on the roof. We get water for an hour or so each day and pump our supply up to tanks on the roof. When the tanks are full, water can be gravity fed into bathrooms and kitchens.

Delhi has particularly rickety infrastructure when in comes to water supply. Thankfully in my neighbourhood we have it pretty good. If I run out of water I run downstairs and ask the landlord to turn on the pump. Occasionally the water coming out of the tap is dirty but most of the time it appears clear. The water is pretty hard so clothes don't come out of the wash as clean as they could and most Delhites are plagued by 'hair fall' so there are countless varieties of hair fall shampoo available… They don't work… My hair is getting thinner by the week... Good thing I started with a lot.

In contrast, many slum dwellers have to fight the crowds for their water. Many slums have no piped water supply so the Municipal Jal (water) Board truck delivers water a couple of times a day. However there is never enough for the growing slum populations and many people receive no water at all. Coupled with this the water deliveries are supposed to be free but in reality residents must pay bribes to have the water delivered.

It doesn't matter where you live in Delhi the water supply is contaminated with sewage, 70 per cent  of samples fail  purity tests conducted by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. Perhaps I should go back to brushing my teeth with filter water.

In our old apartment our landlord installed a fancy-schmancy water filter as he thought having 20L drums delivered was unseemly… whatever… For a while I enjoyed the convenience of the filter water but after a while I noticed a lot of residue building up in the ice cube trays, our filter clearly wasn't removing everything. So I went back to ordering in bottled water for drinking and used the filter water for cooking and washing vegetables etc.
Even though there is no proven correlation between hard water and kidney stones I seem to hear of a lot of people in Delhi being afflicted, so I would rather not take my chances.

As for the butt hose… I have no idea why it and the toilet never seem to run dry.

The most feral animals ever created

100th post… wow that's a lot of verbal diarrhoea.

I tend to read the Sydney Morning Herald on Ipad a couple of times a week. It keeps me up with the news back home as well as current themes in the media and special interest stories.
When I got to the World section yesterday there was an article on the problem of monkeys in urban Delhi. The article caught my eye as it is about my current home town and it was also about an animal I loathe.
I have never liked monkeys… something about their humanoid features creeps me out. It's not just their looks I don't like; they can be aggressive, they carry rabies and they spend their days picking who knows what out of each others fur… seriously, what's to like?

I knew the monkeys of Delhi were a problem but I did not realise how out of hand things were becoming.
I have lived in my particular neighbourhood of South Delhi for nearly two years now. It was months after I moved here that I saw my first monkey in this part of town. But now I see them regularly, almost daily. I hate them. I hate seeing a gang of them roaming down my street looking for ways into houses to pilfer food; especially when I am carrying bags of fruit and veg and I have to walk between rows of parked cars to avoid them. I hate that we have to have a monkey grate to close in our outdoor hallway so they can't get into our kitchen.

The article in the SMH said the reason the monkey population is getting so out of hand is because people feed them. Monkeys represent the Hindu god Hanuman and Hindu tradition calls for feeding of monkeys on Tuesdays and Saturdays… random.

Apparently there is a trapping program in Delhi. The city pays $12 for every monkey trapped. This is not bad money, yet in a city where there are millions of people looking for a job there are very few people applying.
The trapped monkeys are apparently taken to a large 'monkey prison' on the outskirts of Delhi. There has been no decision on what to do with them from there. Authorities want to send them to forests in neighbouring states but those states refuse to take them. There is also the problem that these monkeys are urbanised and would not survive in a forest where there are no kids to steal candy from.

Yesterday a friend was telling me that they went up onto their rooftop and found a monkey pulling the lid off their water tank and then hopping it to drink water. This is the water that they wash their clothes, dishes and shower with…ewww.