World Water Day - wake up & shut the tap

I woke up this morning, logged on to check the news and realized that it’s World Water Day. World Water day? Why do we need a day, one entire day in the year to celebrate the fact that we have water on earth? Thought that was a given right? And then it struck me.

Everyone’s been complaining about the water shortage. Cussing, cribbing, and of course blaming the government. But as usual doing absolutely nothing about it. We continue to brush with the water left on, take long showers, host rain dances during holi – basically shamelessly waste water on one hand and bad mouth the crisis on the other.

Worse still, this has been going on for months, no years actually!

The water shortage has gone from being an intermittent problem to a full fledged crisis. India is well on its way to running out of water by 2020. So now I understand why we need an occasion, a day to remind us of the doomsdays ahead. A day called World Water Day. A day so important, that entire nations drop their differences and come together to warn people of the dangers of this crisis.

How much more proof do you need that it’s time to get our act together and start saving earth’s most precious resource? Are you going to wait till the day you’re surviving on one bucket of water a day? Or till the time when our personal hygiene depends on a burst pipe?

Needless to say, jaagne ka waqt aa gaya hai. Use a bucket of water instead of a shower. At least cut down on the showers if you can’t stop them completely. Tell your maid to put off the tap when she is soaping the utensils. As for those rain dances? Control yourself till the monsoons. Someone great once said ‘boond boond se banta hai sagar’. This World Water Day, if we can’t create an ocean, lets at least resolve not to drain out the ones we have.

What are your thoughts? Got any simple ideas to save water? Share them in the comments below.
Parimal Tripathi is a volunteer content writer for Jaagore. To learn and speak about issues on street children, environmental pollution, garbage disposal, corruption, volunteering, volunteer work, community services, NGOs, social and civic issues visit http://www.jaagore.com