I was reading Arduous's blog and it made me think of the last time I visited my grandfather's village - I was 11 at the time. My grandfather's house was on a hill and the road sloped down from there for at least a mile or more to the Chambal river. There were three bedrooms and a kitchen and an open courtyard. There was a bathroom, but no running water. There was a deep well behind the house with the best tasting water ever. The only way to get water was to get it from the well. My grandmother had huge vessels in the courtyard and once a day cousins from the extended family who lived in the house behind ours would help fill all of them with the water. First you would tie a strong rope to a bucket, then you would lower it some 70-80 feet. Once the bucket was full, the cousins would run upto a point away from the well and loop the end of the rope on the peg. Then run back to the well and pour the water into another bucket and carry it to the house. Needless to say water was ...
It is never too late to be what you might have been.