The seven-minute rush

The men joke, the girls giggle till somebody screams, 8216;8216;O8217; tanker aala The tanker is here.8217;8217; In the distance, a doddering water tanker bearing a 8216;8216;Jai Hanuman8217;8217; board approaches the village. All hell breaks loose.

Scores of women carrying buckets and pots emerge from nowhere and charge towards the queue. The men of the house follow, running in the direction of the tanker. Even before it stops, the men have climbed to the top. The children, even more agile, follow with their green pipes. Each one thrusts his or her pipe into the various openings.

Down below, people surround the tanker with their buckets and bowls and all that can hold water. Their people at the top throw the other end of the pipes down to them. These are then shoved into their vessels once the water starts to flow.

It is a chaotic family affair. A mother shouts instructions to her daughters, while calming a bawling baby on her hip, and passing on a filled pot to her husband. The men, otherwise friendly, push and yell. The girls laugh nervously until their mothers return and whack them back into action.

All through, the driver of the tanker, Namdeo Shinde 40, stands across the road and waits for the mayhem to subside. 8216;8216;Seven minutes,8217;8217; he says. 8216;8216;That8217;s all it takes to empty this 12,000-litre tanker.8217;8217;

Within seven minutes, the tanker is empty. Nobody has managed to get enough water. Some have got nothing. A lot trickles down the road, wasted.

This is how Shirsala gets drinking water once in three days. The nearest water source is over five km away 8212; a well where the tanker refills its capacity. The same tanker delivers water to two or three other villages nearby.

This in a taluka that gave Maharashtra one of its former deputy chief ministers, Gopinath Munde. The developed part of his town receives enough water, as its residents reveal. But Shirsala and other villages are starved for water and power.

8216;8216;Load-shedding is frequent because the nearby thermal power plant is not functioning fully due to water shortage,8217;8217; says Gaffar Rehman, a 49-year-old resident. 8216;8216;When there is a power-cut, the motor at the well doesn8217;t work and the tanker can8217;t be refilled.8217;8217;

Only the fastest and fittest get their share. Others like 12-year-old Nasreen Shabir, will have to wait for the next turn. 8216;8216;I waited in the queue for two hours but didn8217;t get any water,8217;8217; she says shyly.

Seven-year-old Komal Hawle has managed to get two buckets. Sixty-year-old Rashida Sheikh could get one-third of her black plastic tank filled. 8216;8216;But I have to use this for a family of 20,8217;8217; she laughs. Her neighbour, Sojarbai Kivale, 40, has got two buckets and a jar. 8216;8216;That8217;s for 12 people,8217;8217; she says.

It8217;s all about survival. As 35-year-old Bhaskar Tirvale puts it: 8216;8216;We bathe only on Fridays.8217;8217;