By the time Chennai’s water crisis made international headlines, and images of the Indian city’s desiccated reservoirs were being broadcast on TV channels across the globe, and officials acknowledged, in late June, that they had reached “Day Zero” and the pipes had run dry, Deepan’s family had been without reliable water supply for months.
The tanker trunks that brought water to his neighborhood every other day had started to come just once or twice a week. His community had pitched in to build a bore well a few years back, but they weren’t able to extract anything usable. Their neighborhood was built on top of a landfill. “This was — and is — a garbage area,” says Deepan, who goes by one name. “So the groundwater has this brownish tinge.”
His family started washing and bathing less. They’d take days off work, and lose wages, in order to collect drinking water by the bucket-full from far away filling stations.
“Ours is a kind of slum area,” he says. “For us, water is always an issue.”
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