Dry

The tap in my home's toilet is spoilt rotten. It refused to work properly, so we had to have it removed. However, this means that we have to turn off the main water switch so that water would not keep splashing out from the pipe.

When I got home from work today, I saw a lot of dirty dishes in the sink, my dog eating rubbish food, and I was unable to bathe after a tiring workout. All because of one tap. My mom had filled two buckets of water for us to use in the meantime. It was tough, having to fetch water from the toilet to do the dishes, and when I finally decided to turn on the main water switch, I had to bathe in cold water so that the water that was running freely would not go wasted.

All in all, there was a lot of inconvenience.

Then, it dawned on me how much I had taken things for granted. We live in a civilized world, where clean water would flow with the turn of a knob. We do not understand what it means to have to fetch water from the well, let alone dig the well.

When I was little and spent my holidays with my maternal grandma in Malaysia, my father would bring us over to his home, where his parents used to live. My uncle lives there now with his family. Everytime we went over, my father would always make me bathe there, even though I had just had my bath. When I refused, he would get very annoyed but would still insisted that I shower. His reason being, the water that flowed from the tap came from the well, and even during extremely hot days, the water would always be very cooling.

I was a kid, and didn't understand what the fuss was about. The water was chilling to my skin, and despite spending the first 14 years of my life bathing without warm water, I still didn't like that feeling.

When I grew up, I came to know that the source of the water, The Well, was dug by my dad and his elder brother. They started digging during their teenage years and it took them quite a while to finally reach the source of clean water.

I guess my father wanted me to enjoy the fruits of his labour, thus his insistence at my bathing whenever I went over.

It's been years since i last visited the old house with the well. I think, if I ever do visit again, I would most definitely bathe there, and at the same time, remember the hard work that was once put in, for this source of clean water.