A trickle of water

Water has been held as sacred in all of the world’s major religions; from the immersion ritual of Judaism, the Christian baptism, the Islamic wazoo (ablution), to the Buddhist water offerings at shrines. It serves as a symbol of purity and of regeneration. Prior to these religions, humans from prehistoric times have considered the benefits of water to be divine gifts or divinity itself. Today, we have filtered it, we can ionize and deionize water, we have found ways to utilize its power to harness energy, like with every other element we have tried our best to turn it inside and out, to inspect, distort and dissect it, and in doing so we have placed systems and mechanisms, to purify the purifier. Despite it, all water remains ungraspable, it remains finite and precious and as has happened in Cape Town recently, Pakistan is also currently under threat of water shortage, and the days may not be too far where we must also ration our intake of water. One cannot help but question, have we been abandoned, have the gods and goddess of water scorned us for meddling into matters they may consider beyond us. Why does the Indus no longer bestow us with its gifts; why, in the scorching heat, does it no longer pour; why does a sip of water come with the threat of disease? Putting superstition aside, perhaps our cries are better directed inwards, our panic better directed towards a solution than towards hoarding.