It’s time to prepare for the Indian lifestyle on the eve of my trip to India. In the thirty years of visiting Bangalore, the water supply situation has been constantly changing. In the early years, my parents’ home received city water from a nearby lake. When that promised to dry up, the city tapped into the Cauvery River, piping in water from several hundreds of miles away. When that also dried up, my parents reluctantly commissioned the drilling of a bore well under our driveway to tap into ground water. With the single family home plots turned into multi-storied apartment buildings, the ground water supply is also drying up.
Enter the single bucket of water bathing method. With one bucket of water, and exactly one bucket- you enter the bathroom, and come out clean - torso, arms, legs, hair and scalp - one and all. Living in America with an endless stream of water pouring down from the shower fixture atop, this seems like an impossible task. A week before the trip, I find myself easing into the one bucket routine. This means, passing up the shower in favor of a bucket of water in the bathtub. It means wetting yourself thoroughly before soaping. It means soaping yourself everywhere before wasting precious rinse water… and then making sure that when you do rinse all parts of the body, benefit from the force of gravity by pouring water from the top down. An exercise, at once in resource management, speed of execution and preparedness, it is a tremendously disciplining exercise. And the glow of saving precious fresh water resources and making a dent on the water bill at the same time lasts for a while.
I take a second long look at the world around me in the United States … supersized SUVs with just the single driver. The huge mall where we take our daily walks in winter filled with but less than a hundred people on a weekday evening … the size of a 2 gallon milk jug at Costco that seems to last for three weeks for the two of us. Will the bucket of water mean renewed focus and discipline and a concentration on innovation and frugality for the US also?
Enter the single bucket of water bathing method. With one bucket of water, and exactly one bucket- you enter the bathroom, and come out clean - torso, arms, legs, hair and scalp - one and all. Living in America with an endless stream of water pouring down from the shower fixture atop, this seems like an impossible task. A week before the trip, I find myself easing into the one bucket routine. This means, passing up the shower in favor of a bucket of water in the bathtub. It means wetting yourself thoroughly before soaping. It means soaping yourself everywhere before wasting precious rinse water… and then making sure that when you do rinse all parts of the body, benefit from the force of gravity by pouring water from the top down. An exercise, at once in resource management, speed of execution and preparedness, it is a tremendously disciplining exercise. And the glow of saving precious fresh water resources and making a dent on the water bill at the same time lasts for a while.
I take a second long look at the world around me in the United States … supersized SUVs with just the single driver. The huge mall where we take our daily walks in winter filled with but less than a hundred people on a weekday evening … the size of a 2 gallon milk jug at Costco that seems to last for three weeks for the two of us. Will the bucket of water mean renewed focus and discipline and a concentration on innovation and frugality for the US also?
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