Mission: Water Tank Clean up

“No, we are not going to use this water.  We doubt that it is not clean enough and is not fit to meet out the daily requirements” was the common consensus in my house, a few days after the plumber refused to change the water tank. 

All my family members were at their hygienic-best for almost a month (and waiting for the plumber to change his mind which he didn’t) and didn’t budge their stand on using the water; hoping for the best.

When we realised that nothing is going to happen, we decided to clean it ourselves. I was the one who was assigned the work to clean it along with my dad, which required going to the terrace which didn’t even have any stairs to go up through. I refused to go and asked my sibling to assist dad. Dad took her along unwillingly. (She’s quite slow and lazy and quite frightened one as well)

After a while, she came back to home, for some cleaning material when I asked, “You didn’t go up, how is it like?” She replied, “It’s very difficult to climb up through the wooden ladder, I’m not going up.” Upon listening to this, I wondered if it is that difficult. I had a dim memory of going up on the terrace when I used to be a kid. I decided to go up and give it a try.

When I reached there I could make out by just looking at it that the gap between the terrace and the end of the ladder must be a foot or less which I could cover easily. I was up on the terrace within moments. 

(Later on, when I was teasing my sibling over the fact she couldn’t even climb up a ladder, she explained that when she saw dad climbing up the ladder, it looked like it is a task in itself, but when she saw me doing the same thing with such ease, given the fact that I’m too light weighted, she realised that it is not that difficult and even she could’ve managed to do it.)

After I reached up, I took a look at the water tank which was stinking and had mud at the bottom. Then began the quest to clean it up, but ‘how’ the question was. It was too deep for a stretched out hand. So the stick was brought into the scenario with a cloth attached to one end; we trashed the idea after it dawned upon that the cloth is too short and the amount of mess to be cleaned up is too much.

I spotted a bottle-cut-into-half lying over a distance. I asked dad to find some way so that we can dip the bottle into the tank and load it with mud. He handed over a copper wire to me saying this would do. I tried to pierce the bottle with the help of the wire. I put all my strength to pierce the bottle, but as my poor analytical skills would have it, I ended up wounding my finger. (The bottle was not that thick to require such strength and the wire right after piercing the bottle went straight into my finger.) 


Not minding the pain which was not much (it didn’t even bleed properly, which set a fear in my heart if I’m anemic). The model helped for some time and had to be discarded after the water level was terribly low.

A thick and an absorbent cloth was called upon and dad did the rest of the work with it. Meanwhile, I was searching for the names, which I had scribbled, along with my friends, on the terrace when we were kids, which were not there for the obvious reasons. I looked down to sense the height at which we were.

And it was too high for me, the trees looked too tiny, I could see up to a kilometer’s distance which is a dream if you live in a city surrounded by the tall residential buildings, Planes after planes taking their flight within a gap of minutes and such other things which you tend to miss if you live on the lower levels. 

Anyway, it felt nice to see things from a different perspective and also the sense of security that the water supplied would be clean enough. Climbing up and down the ladder was also the fun part. (You must be thinking that how stupid I’m to derive fun out of climbing the ladder but that is how it is.)