Let’s restart our journey after so long with one of my favourite times of the year. The annual performances of the kids at school! Both the kids had their annual days over the weekend. Last week from Thursday to Sunday was pretty hectic. School timings changed for both to accommodate practices and it was a bit confusing to remember 2 different timings for both. I had to keep re reading the emails from school to remind myself the changed timings. Drop and pick up A and wait for P’s bus and pick up P at 10 in the night from the bus stop. Crazy right? And in all that craziness I skipped seeing that A was to be sent to the venue for practice on Saturday. I sent her to school and she had to come all the way back and then dropped to the auditorium. That itself is another story 😂

P’s school has made their annual production a really big deal…. in a good way of course. They make an entire musical with a live band and choir. So they have their production every alternate year. One year its primary school and the next is secondary. That way they alternate them. Coz they spend over 3 months in conceptualising and practising and preparing. The stage backdrops and props etc are all made by the students themselves. Each item has proper costumes. Their directors and teachers guide them all through the way and the results are simply fantastic.

This year their musical was called “Message in a bottle”. It showed all the issues related to water. Pollution, shortage, misuse….. and the greatest problem of our home city Polluted lakes. It was a beautifully written and performed play. Each character true to its nature and each dance and singing performance lively and colourful and perfectly co ordinated. The musical brought home the point bang on. Bengaluru is predicted to run out of water in 2020. Which is very alarming. They brought out the issues not only here but all over India and the world. And at the end they distributed messages in bottles to all parents. Here it is

It’s really striking how we take this very important necessity for granted. Just because it’s available now and for us privileged it’s easy access. Corporation water is not enough…. we dig up our own bore well. My maid for instance lives hardly a kilometre away from my house and has to wake up at un godly hours to fill water for the day. That too she has to walk up to the community tap. This is her story. In several villages people walk for hours to get water. It’s high time we all woke up and stop wasting water. Making a small start with every individual can save us one drop at a time.

Wastage and pollution have been the 2 major contributors for water shortage. We have close to a 100 lakes in Bengaluru but none are fit for drinking. They are all so overly polluted that they stink. Yes… they practically stink. If you are around one of them you can actually smell the filth and sewage. Some lakes have toxic foam floating on their surface which not only catches fire sometimes but also overflows onto the roads and flies around in the surrounding areas during monsoon.

Let’s all make a promise to ourselves that we will do our own little thing to save water as much as we can.