Most of you who have visited here have heard about, if not experienced our water crisis.

In the early pre-electricity years, it would be the well drying up in summer; our having to deepen it; with all the associated moving the pump down, longer belt for the engine etc. Some of you have had to cart water up from Parman’s well.

Then came Electricity, and the bore well ensured a few relatively crisis-free years. Even then there was the Thumbal transformer blowing up which meant no Electricity for three weeks. Ten-twelve years go by.

And then the bore well dries up one year: Horror of horrors. We “manage’ water from neighbours till the rain saves the situation.

This year, the voltage has been too low to pull up water; so that though the bore well hasn’t dried up, we have had to ferry water from Valagapattu on the bike and then up the slope on shoulders. In March!

We hope to do something which has been on our to-do list for many years but has always given way to the tyranny of the immediate; till now, when it has become the tyranny of the immediate. We are planning a roof-water harvesting system, which should go a long way towards easing the crisis since when it rains it pours. But this would ease the crisis on the domestic water front. For the trees it is a different story.

This year we are seeing the result of four years of poor rainfall; unprecedented heat (it is 40 degrees outside as I write at two in the afternoon) and a change in the rainfall patterns.

Many full-grown trees are dying. Our (iconic) junglee badam to the east of the house is dry and may not sprout leaves again. This was one of the first trees we planted. Its daughter to the west may also go the same way. Three of the 7–8 year old jackfruits are dead. As are a couple of guavas on the way to the Hippo rock. And it looks likely that we will lose at least a couple of lemons and more mangoes.

The April rains which tided us over the dry season have not made their appearance in four years. So there is a six month dry spell from December till it rains in July: The trees are not used to this. (And neither are we.)

Work done (=Trees planted) in the last 7 years or so may be reduced to nought with no possibility of renewal. If it does not rain in April there is no way of saving anything from the previous years’ planting “up here” on the hillside.

We can see that just as a forest can be created, it can also die in front of our eyes. Like a canary in a coalmine.