Stories From Long Ago - Part II (a.k.a How I Discovered Water)

"So what story are you going to tell me today?"

"But I thought it was your turn today!"

"But I like listening to stories from when you were little. I want a story!"

"Ok, ok, ok. Hmmm. So, once upon a time..."

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Summer meant running around all day, climbing trees, watching the same old movie tapes again and again, and over again. Home Alone. Tom & Jerry. Beautiful People. The Gods Must Be Crazy. There was this plant in the Kalahari desert. It's root looked something like an overgrown potato. And the bushmen scraped the skin off the root and squeezed it, and they got water. 

If you dig deep enough, you will find water. I read that somewhere. Also, the soil was always damp when we dug, no matter how dry the sand was at the top. So the water was there. It was just a matter of digging deep enough.

But then there's only so deep you can dig with your hands. We needed some heavy machinery. There was this rusty garden hoe lying in the darkened store room. The answer to the water problem of Cherthala.

So one fine, jobless morning, me and my trusty friend, started digging for water in my backyard. As I hacked through the earth, we became excited seeing the damp soil beneath. "We're almost there! Keep digging!", he yelled. And pretty soon, there was a thunk!, and water started flowing out of the hole in the ground. Well, I hadn't expected it so soon. Because it was supposed to be really deep underground. But who cares, we'd struck water! We had solved the water crisis! We were going to be famous! (...yeah, bang on, that last one.)

Soon, the backyard was flooded, and the water was snaking through the fence into my neighbour's yard. By now, my aunt had started yelling at me from the house about something. I had been too elated to listen to her, but the water wasn't stopping. How do you stop a natural source of water? "I'll plug the hole with a brick!", I said. There were plety of them lining the hedge anyway. The brick disappeared into the "spring" with a disappointing plop. And yeah, the water kept coming. Now what? The geniuses that we were, we decided to "build a dam!". Yeah, we started piling up mighty walls of sand around the edges of the mini lake. Epic fail. The water just flowed past like they didn't exist.

Now, the neighbours' servants started coming out to see what was going on. Turns out the water in the houses had stopped. One of them yelled at us saying "I haven't cooked lunch yet, and now their little girl doesn't have any food for the afternoon, all because of you two!".

By this time, we had sort of figured out we'd probably need to hightail it to the arid Kalahari to escape the hiding of a lifetime when our parents got back from work. And that the "spring", was in fact an underground water pipe. And the "thunk!" was the sound of the hoe breaking a sizeable hole into it.

An odd jobsguy from the nearby hospital turned up after a while, and surveyed the destruction. Water was still bubbling up from our "spring". Two yards were flooded. A group of seething servants. And two very sheepish looking kids.

"You guys did this?".

Er no, there was this giant crab...

Er no, a mole...

Er no, this hole just *appeared* this morning...

"Yeah...we were digging..."

He turned off the water, and fixed it, and we stood around watching him. Pretty soon, all the water seeped back underground (...from whence it came.). The hole was covered up. The water in the houses was back. And I think the little girl had her rice porridge or whatever she wanted for lunch.

I didn't come out of the house for a week.

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"Hahahaha! You were a menace, weren't you?"

"Hey, I thought I could hit a natural spring!"

"Hahahaha! A natural spring!"

"Well yeah, the way they showed it on TV, I thought I could. But I knew something was wrong when the water came out so soon."

"Hahahaha!"

"Yeah, yeah, that's enough. Now go to sleep."

"But I'm not sleepy any more! I want another story!"

"Another story? But if I tell you all the stories now, what will you do tomorrow? And besides, you have class tomorrow. So go to sleep now."

"Hmmm, ok. But will you tell me another story tomorrow?"

"Yeah, I will."

"Ok. Goodnight..."

"Goodnight..."