In times gone by in Rajasthan, where I was born, people were known by the type of water they drank. “Let me see which well’s water you have drunk” was a common way of challenging someone. Parents would check the water of the village before fixing their daughters’ marriages there. And, there are legends of kings destroying wells if they suspected their waters to be founts of rebelliousness. Kutina, my native village in the foothills of the Aravalis, had a well known as the sweet-water well. The water was valued particularly for its taste and wholesomeness. T.E. Lawrence, the famous Lawrence of Arabia, who, it is said, was a well-water connoisseur, might have appreciated its taste. When I was a child, the potable water for our household was drawn from this well, located outside the village. The passers-by journeying through made it a point to carry its water, for in those days the village was not connected with a motorable road and one had to either walk or ride a camel to the nearest bus station. Every summer, Baba, my grandfather, would arrange for a water-hut by the well from which a villager served cool water to the passers by.That was in the early ’70s. Then, after my grandparents’ death, most relatives shifted to towns and I also lost touch with the village. My father, who sometimes visited the place, used to tell us how things were changing and how, with tube-wells mushrooming in the area, the water table had gone down. However, I paid scant attention.Decades later, our extended family reunited in the village just for a day for thanksgiving to the family deity. After the rituals, we sat down for the customary feast. Seeing the tumbler of water placed in front, I asked a cousin, who lives in the village, if the water was from the sweet-water well. He replied, “Oh, that well has dried up years ago. This is tap water.”For a moment, I felt I had lost an old part of my family. Then, regarding the water before me with suspicion, I began to eat. My cousin sensed it. He sent someone to get a few bottles of mineral water from a nearby shop. As I took a sip, I felt my throat scorched — by irony.
