I've written about this before. We have a water shortage problem where I live and we get water for about half an hour everyday. In this half hour, I need to fill buckets of water in the two bathrooms, the kitchen and the service veranda. To keep an eye on all four places is a little tricky and involves a bit of running around.


What really bugs me though, is my eighty year old grandmothers insistence that she carry heavy buckets of water. While I'm keeping an eye on the bathroom, she lugs about heavy buckets in the service veranda. Then I'll run to the service veranda and chide her for lifting such loads and ask her to watch the bathroom where its relatively easier(Once the buckets have been filled, one only needs to wait for the tank to fill up). Instead she'll go to the kitchen and start doing the same stuff there. She wont stop until every bucket and vessel in the house is brimming with water. " You never know, we might not get water one day. What will we do then? " she'll ask when I express my annoyance.

We get water at exactly 7:00 AM. While it takes me a couple of minutes to realise that its time to start filling, my grandmother is taut with tension and waiting to explode into action from 6:50 AM. So by the time I get to the service veranda, she's already filled half the buckets.

Her determination to fill water borders on the fanatical. Why wont she understand that if she slips and falls, the recovery will be extremely painful? Sometimes I think she's trying to prove a point. That she might be eighty but still capable of immense feats of strength.

Now I've just resigned myself to the fact that my grandmother will continue lifting no matter what I tell her. Given a chance she'll lift me when I'm filling the buckets. I only hope she never falls.