When I was
a child – about 45 years ago – there were so many ponds in my village. Ponds in
the backyard of a house, ponds in the fields, ponds on the slopes and at the bottoms
of hills, and if that were not enough, there were also large temple ponds.
When I was
six or seven years old, I used to cross eight ponds and a large stream to buy
milk from a house located just half a kilometre away. The path was full of tadpoles,
olive barb fishes (paralmeen), and the snakehead fish (kannanmeen)
that opened their mouths and swam up if you threw a pebble into the water. The muddy
edge of the ponds was covered with crab burrows, with crabs occasionally peeping
out to look around. Water snakes waving their heads & tails, swam like
arrows shot from a bow. Turtles occasionally looked upto check if anyone was
approaching and then crouched down shyly if they saw someone, as if saying,
"I'll come back tomorrow when no one would be here". The rainbow-hued kingfisher sat so still that it seemed to say “I will wake
up from my meditation only when a Ray Finned fish (paralmeen) floats up”;
the pond herons with their long beak lowered into the marshy land of the
paddy fields and on the ridges searching for something; and the croaking Ornate
Horned Frog (pokachitawala) loudly croaked “Pekrom, Pekrom"...That's
how my friends were...
I would wander around immersed in my own universe, talking a little to them
and sometimes scaring those who didn’t hear me. As you walked through the rice
paddies in the morning, the dewdrops clinging to the leaves would run down your
hands and feet, bringing a slight chill. The dewdrops lingering on the tips of
the black grass at the edge of the ridge would sparkle like pearls in the
sunlight.
The path ahead would lead down to the stream, water gurgling by with a soft
murmur. I would wash my feet enjoying the coolness of the water. In many places
purse seine fishing nets (spreadkuruthis) looked like they were sitting with
their mouth open against the current. I'd take a look at that. I used to wonder
which way the fish would be coming!!!
As soon as I used to reach home, my friends would call me for a bath in the temple pond. The bath always ended up dividing the pool into eight pools. The ruckus was unimaginable if there ended up being a group of children. They would just jump in and frolic in the water for an hour or two. If possible, they would jump off the diving wall (a high wall instead of today's springboard) and splash water in all directions. If there were young girls nearby, one could hear gossip and conversation floating through the air. Wasn't it fun to listen to their affectionate bickering?
It's as if I woke up from a beautiful dream. Slowly but surely, one has to
come back to the reality.
Where are those ponds today? When the ponds – which are the source of so much biological wealth –dried up, the biodiversity of an entire village is threatened. The very culture that surrounded the ponds and the fields has been lost. Lands that had never known drought before are parched. Humans and animals have begun to scramble for water.
Ponds and reservoirs are essential to retain water on earth. In olden days,
ponds were mostly dug on hillsides, depending on the terrain. The ancient
societies were able to harvest water through these ponds and that’s what even
the modern science suggests. It not only stores the rain water, but also slowly
irrigates the soil. This decreases the possibility of drought. When those ponds
were lost to the rubber and banana plantations of the present days, the rain
water would flow directly into the rivers without stopping anywhere, making
these rivers swell, thereby causing sudden flood. So, when the monsoon is over,
drought sets in.
Thus, in order to save our future – to save the biological wealth on earth – we need to save water; and for that we need to rebuild as many water bodies as possible. Let all our lost biodiversity return. Let the turtle, the otter, the frog, the hermit crab, and the fishes all come back like before. Without it our entire earth will become a barren land and we would struggle to get even a drop of drinking water!!!
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