Astrology  Chat  Cityscape  Classifieds  Entertainment  Health  Matrimonial 
Music  News  Panorama  Search  Shopping  Services  Tours & Travel  Home

During the journey to Nenmeli, our car gave up the ghost and I already saw it coming that we would have to take the next bus to safely return to Chennai. But within a few minutes somebody had not only got a substitute car but had also found a car mechanic who quickly repaired our broken vehicle.

I was amazed that in such a usually very chaotic country like India things can be arranged spontaneously and surprisingly fast if it's necessary. In contrast, when you want to enlist a service in Germany, which according to the law should be ready after two days, you can be sure that your car will be ready after exactly this period of time - neither earlier nor later.

Things seem to be completely different in India: When a service is supposed to take two days it is possible that your mechanic will on the one hand need five days or on the other, only two hours if your matter is really urgent (and probably if you know your mechanic well).

The Nenmeli oorani looked totally different from the one at Edaiyur. It is one of the 6,000 ooranis in Tamil Nadu which are supposed to be built and modernised within the framework of the Indo-German project. However, today, it is still overgrown not only by plants but also filled with by plastic bags and old batteries.

The water in the nearby well looks like tough, green mud and smells strange. Nevertheless, we saw women coming to the well and filling their buckets with its water. I wondered what they would use it for. For cleaning? For the laundry? Or even as their drinking water?

The oorani's enormous size impressed me only at first sight because I knew by then that a huge surface of the pond means high loss of water due to evaporation and that therefore the oorani's depth is much more decisive.

In Nenmeli the project team plans to build a, compared to the old one, ten-fold smaller and equally deeper new oorani inside the old one - if everything works out well, of course. Walther knows from his own experiences at Edaiyur what can go wrong: "Sometimes it is very difficult to convince the employees of the importance of the details. For example, it is unbearable that one side of the pond is suddenly shortened by one metre - without any reason! One metre seems little when taking into consideration the oorani's whole size. But actually it means a loss of several cubic metres of water which we, and especially the village, cannot afford to lose."

The villager's water consumption had been thoroughly calculated and the oorani's size is based on these data.

Another problem was if the conditions of the soil in Nenmeli would allow the team to dig a hole which would be deep enough for a reasonable new oorani. Hence, we started to bore a hole into the ground - and we were lucky! Not only was the hole definitely more than deep enough, we even struck groundwater!

Thus, nothing stands in the way of the new oorani anymore, at least from the technical point of view.

After a free lunch at Tirukazhukundram (which also would be unimaginable in Germany) we went to our third and last location: Pattikadu.

The local oorani is beautifully situated. It borders on a rice field and a little forest with eucalyptus trees and is surrounded by huge, shady trees.

Here, we again checked if the soil conditions for the new oorani would allow it to be deep enough. Everybody gave a sigh of relief when Walther finally shouted: "Ok, enough! We don't need to go deeper!" Which meant that a next little step in the improvement of Tamil Nadu's water-supply has been mad possible.

After having quickly measured the old oorani's size, Cornelia and I were given a string of jasmine flowers by the villagers. We arrived at home exhausted and tired, but equally contented and with shiny faces. And with the resolution to come back and visit the people, the ooranis and the beautiful natural scenes soon.

After having seen the ooranis with my own eyes I am even more convinced of their simple but appropriate construction. An oorani looks like a little lake and therefore doesn't destroy the village's natural sight or atmosphere.

Furthermore, an oorani enables the villagers to no longer be dependent only upon the ground water level and thus to secure their livelihood independently.

And although many people still seem to have to learn how to handle their new responsibility, which is definitely a consequence of their independence, I am confident that the oorani project will be successful not only at Edaiyur but in the whole of Tamil Nadu. And, who knows, maybe even in the whole of India?

Ania Zymelka

(Ania, born in Poland, now lives in north Germany with her family. She has just completed her schooling and is waiting to go to university. In the meantime, she decided she would also visit a country and learn about it. She will be exploring the economic, political, cultural, social and other links that Chennai has with Germany during her three-month stint in Chennaionline. Ed)