Water, water, everywhere...

A young woman recently told me that after a bout of illness, she stopped going to school. I was not surprised. Two decades ago, after a tryst with typhoid, I took a drastic step myself. I gave up drinking water; more specifically, unsafe water!

I should not have drunk it in the first place, but there was a time when I was incredibly careless. On train journeys to Delhi, I would nimbly alight at stations, fill a jerry-can at platform taps and race back to the Karnataka Express. When well-wishers cautioned me aga-inst the probable consequences, I dism-issed their concern. Fit at 40, I was pro-ne to minor infections but, barring the mumps and measles of my childhood, I had rarely been seriously unwell.

My arrogant assumption, that I possessed an inherent immunity to water-borne diseases, was shattered in March 1996, when I was struck down by typhoid. So virulent was the attack that, if Shakespeare’s Macbeth was doomed to ‘sleep no more,’ I seemed destined never to rise! When I eventually surfaced from my sickbed, I exchanged one ailment for another, trading typhoid for hydrophobia. The life-giving liquid, I felt, was hazardous to health!

Since then, no foreigner touring India could be as careful as I am. I take elaborate precautions at home, and, when away from its security, I buy packaged drinking water, no matter how expensive. My brother finds my prophylactic paranoia amusing.

On one occasion, while alone at his Mumbai apartment, I foolishly let down my guard. Uncomfortable in the heat and humidity, I saw a half-full glass container on the kitchen counter-top. Believing that pure water had considerately been kept there for my benefit, I helped myself. On discovering that the water I had consumed was far from filtered, I was told not to worry. “After all,” said my brother reassuringly, “although you did not drink bottled water, you did drink water from a bottle!”

Some years ago, he joined my husband and me on a trip to Israel, where we visited a church that stands on the site of a well. There, in a characteristic break from prejudicial tradition, Jesus Christ had requested a Samaritan woman for water. By means of a rope and pulley, a priest delved deep and held out mugs to the members of our group.

As our fellow pilgrims drank reverently, my brother eyed me sardonically. I could see him wondering whether I regarded the water, which had quen-ched the thirst of Jesus, as good enough for me. At that watershed (pun intended) moment, faith conquered fear!

Now, once again, I am my usual suspicious self. With apologies to Coleridge, here is my adaptation of his famous lines: Water, water, everywhere/ Let me pause to think/ Water, water, everywhere/ Do I dare to drink?