Water Spots

Go zodiacal and ask me. I am a water sign and water amazes me. Amazement apart, there used to be an abundance of water sources at our village. West of us was the Canolly Canal; our connection to the vastness that is the Arabian Sea. In the east, Thanneer Kayal remained “in water” for the best part of any year.

In between these two water locks, we were graced with an abundance of Kulam’s (ponds) – large and small – and Kiner’s (mud water wells).

The larger of our ponds were common (public) facilities and were used by the ordinary folks for washing, bathing and other routines. There were two large ponds within the Main Mosque Compound, another one attached to the Manaloo Masjid. A couple of ponds still exist to the north and south west of the Puthukavil Nada temple.

But the largest of them all were attached to neither to a temple nor to a mosque. That pond was in Kumbalathe Akayil compound – a true secular public pond; this has, however, become shrunk over the years but still survives, if you could ignore the weeds.



There were so many smaller, private ponds spread all over the village, almost all of which have - by now - disappeared.

The wells were used for drawing drinking water and the ponds for washing, bathing and some occasional irrigation.

Today, a water well, reinforced by concrete ring walls, is a must in every household. But in older days, the wells weren’t so common. Only privileged households did have them. People from a wide locality depended on these few wells for their drinking water supply.

The wells were basically mud wells, dug deep and circular in shape. There were no embankment or protective walls around. A moment of carelessness could make your foot slip down while drawing water from it.

Normally water was drawn by shaping the arecanut sheaths (extension of the leaf) in to a basket and tying coir ropes around both ends of this basket. A wooden stick is positioned vertically between the two ends of the basket which acts as a balancer and keeps the sheath stretched out.

Water was fetched in baked clay kudam’s (large water pots) usually carried by woman who grips them firmly around the top brims in both their hands.

The water spots were mostly segregated. Men and women never mix in the bathing places. Water wells are a reserved place for the women anyway.

Water spots are the traditional entertainment places for the kids as well as the womenfolk. Water drawing time and the washing time happened to be the rare “free time” for the women when they engaged in some gossiping with neighbors or friends.

They could go a step even further while taking their bath in the ponds; they get a precious opportunity of an entertainment there; that was going for a swim or a dive. So did their kids too. In short, bathing time in a pond becomes something like an actual celebratory opportunity for the family.

Abundance of water, however, did lead to a situation where no recognition was made of its importance. Maintenance of water sources was of the least priority. This has now come to the sad stage where the ponds were utterly neglected, callously allowed to be parched, decayed, spoiled or even willfully leveled up for buildings. Now the village, like every other village in Kerala, is gradually moving towards scarcity of ground water resources.