Apart from the need to supplement family income and undertake regular household chores, Shobha also has to find time to do one thing that living in the capital of a country would usually not involve: fetch water. [break]
Shobha sets out from her small rented room in Gongabu every morning, entrusting her mother-in-law to look after her child, to fetch water. She needs to take a day off every week, not for spending quality time with family but to fetch water all the way from a stone spout in Ranibari.
"We all will die of thirst if I do not fetch water once every week," she said, squatting by a seemingly unending queue of the valley folks, waiting to fill up their empty vessels, in a recent, scorching summer day.
When myrepublica.com caught up with her, she had already spent three hours in the queue. Yet not looking exhausted, she said: "I expect to fill up my vessel after waiting for six hours from now."
Shobha, who earns an average of Rs 500 a day by hawking cosmetic items, loses a whole day´s earning just for a bucket of water. She, however, finds herself a tad lucky as there is a government tap and a tube well in the house she lives in.
"Other women in my locality have neither taps nor tube wells," she points out. They, she says, fetch water for every household work, from drinking to washing clothes, from far-away spouts.
Shobha, who earns an average of Rs 500 a day by hawking cosmetic items, loses a whole day´s earning just for a bucket of water. When myrepublica.com caught up with her, she had already spent three hours in the queue. And she hoped to fill up her vessel after waiting for six more hours.
Unlike her neighbors who do not have the luxury of taps and tube wells, Shobha needs to fetch water just for drinking.
A vessel of 20 liters of water is enough for her family of five for a week.
"The water I get from shallow tube well is okay only for washing clothes and using in toilet," she says. "I have no other options though it is a bit yellowish and stinking." The equally sorry is the state of water she gets through the tap. "It is absolutely unfit to drink," she says. "It is full of sediments of soil and sand."
No matter how polluted the water supplied by Kathmandu Upatyaka Khanepani Limited (KUKL) is, Shobha finds relief in it. In winter, when KUKL virtually stops water supply.
"In winter days, I shuttle from one spout to another in pursuit of little water every alternative day," she says. "My earning plummets in winter. Our whole family hinges on my husband´s earning."
Endless suffering
Shobha, originally from Chitwan, has been suffering from water woes ever since she entered the Kathmandu Valley some 10 years ago.
In her early days, she rented a room at Bagbazar, keeping in view the proximity of Padma Kanya Campus, where she was studying ICom. Residing in Bagbazar was more horrible compared to now, as she would have to remain awake all through nights to fetch water.
KUKL used to supply water only in mid-nights. Dozens of denizens would queue up for hours before water finally started trickling down from a public tap there. At times, she scuffled with others just for a bucket of water.
"After sleepless nights, I would quite often feel drowsy in class, which by and large hampered my study," she recollects. Ultimately, she dropped out.
As an outsider migrating into the valley aspiring for a better life, Shobha kept on shifting from one place to another. One of common problems she confronted in all localities was the scarcity of water. Be it Maitidevi and Sohrakhutte she lived in, the water crisis adversely affected her daily life. "Even in nights, I would wake up anxious for water," she recollects.
The only locality Shobha found solace in was Patan, where she was able to fetch water from a dug-well, some 10 minute walk from her rented room. "We relied on that well even for drinking water, for it was very clean," she reminisces. "I still miss the sweetness of water I consumed at Mangalbazar."
After marriage, Shobha moved to New Delhi for a few years, where the water problem was not as bad as it is now in Kathmandu. Once back to Kathmandu, the chronic water crisis began to haunt her again.
The dearth of water has turned her lifestyle upside down, as evident by the compromise she has made with her idea of water´s purity or staleness. For her, while in Chitwan, water collected in the morning was stale by the evening.
"Water is not considered stale even after a whole week in Kathmandu," she says. When her mother-in-law joined them a few months back, she frowned upon learning that people here drink ´stale water´. As time passed by, she, too, came to terms with drinking ´stale water´. She does not complain anymore.
Drying spouts
A pair of stone spouts, just off the Ranibari jungle, has proved to be an oasis to thousands of thirsty households in nearby localities.
People from densely populated localities like Kapurdhara, Chakrapath, Lazimpat and Samakhusi, flock to these spouts every day with their empty vessels. A few unemployed youths even earn money by selling water collected from these sprouts. The unending line of empty vessels exposes the acute shortage of water in the Valley.
However, several spouts in these localities have dried up, thanks to some unscrupulous people´s unregulated business of extracting ground water for commercial purpose.
A fine example of it is Kapurdhara, a spout that quenched thirsts of all denizens of this area until two years ago. Water no longer flows out of it nowadays. With the drying up of this spout, locals are compelled to wander farther.
Lal Bahadur Tamang, 60, who has been living in Kapurdhara area for the past 17 years, now goes to either Panipokhari or Ranibari spouts for drinking water. "So long as Kapurdhara existed, I did not need to think of water ever," he says. "I fear that remaining stone spouts will also dry up in near future."
According to NGO Forum, a network of NGOs working in water and sanitation sectors, of the total 389 traditional stone spouts discovered so far in the Kathmandu valley, only 233 are functioning. While 68 spouts have dried up, 45 no longer exist. Likewise, 43 spouts have been revived by connecting KUKL pipe lines to them.
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