24. Write a letter to save water
This is what House offers today — I hate words. I like actions which are like a continuous rhythm. I like sleep.
There is a water tap leaking in a library from universes beyond here. The house can only take a metro to it in dreams. A young assistant of the library quips that this continuously-evolving-water-from-the-blue-pipe is being collected underground in large water harvesting structure. His arms widen to show the volume of the tank. The house in our colony yawns.
Water tap is cascading in the library. It hates sound. It likes words. So when the same elderly reader, who saw the assistant imitate volume, walks up to the secretary of the library, the leaking tap was the first to read her application:
Seat 67s
The Only Library (left)
Newer New Delhi — 01
1 Paril, 202x
The Secretary’s Secretary
The Only Library (we did not move)
Newer New Delhi — 01
Subject: Request to save water (everywhere) being destroyed from RO machines.
Respected Secretary,
The water tap of the reading room is continuously letting go of the unfiltered water….
I am going to draw your attention to how she did not say ‘waste water’ or that I am wasting water. I am not. Moving on…
….the unfiltered water from RO water purifier. It is with extreme urgency I request you to save this water and use it for purposes of watering trees. Delhi is suffering from water crisis and we are in the midst of extinction. Please take immediate steps (even if it is just putting a bucket and making sure that the water is regularly reused for trees or increasing groundwater below) and glorify your climate saving skills.
Yours sincerely (worried),
Climate-changed-extinction-affected reader
