Earthen pots on streets

Delhi, and much of North India, is subject to a harsh, long and dry summer – days with temperatures upto 45-50 degrees, a breeze that feels like it is trying to cook in a tandoor, and a scorching sun that can burn leaves and flowers if they are in its gaze for even just an hour.

Growing up in Delhi in this extreme summer has its advantages too – the mango and litchi season is short but sweet, the streets are full of yellow Laburnam trees and red Gulmohar ones too, making canopies over pothole ridden roads, leading to Rooh Afza lazy evenings.

My grandmother, who grew up in Gujranwala and Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan), always kept an earthen pot of water outside our house, right next to a stone bench. This little pot covered with a little plate covering the top, kept water cool and clean. I always wondered why she did so – who would ever stop and drink water from these pots?

A number of people walk to work in Delhi – even during the harsh summer, people commuting to and from menial jobs, domestic labour, daily wage labourers, your local press wala. Many did pass by our house. Our little residential lane between a temple and a gurudwara, flanked by the residential colony of Bangladeshi immigrants and Sikhs from Kabul, served as a convenient short cut on their journeys. As a child, I saw several people stop outside our home during the hottest time of the day (between 12 noon and 3pm), and take a drink of water – sit on the cool stone bench under an overtly gangly Ashoka tree.

I only thought of this, and remembered this so, because of something I saw yesterday – almost 15 years later. (Picture attached). Someone is trying to revive this thoughtful practice all these years later in urban India. It is beautiful to think that a little earthen pot of water, a symbol of the old in this newly commercialized and urbanized city of Delhi, can provide relief to several people.

Outside Panscheel Club, on the Outer Ring Road – South Delhi