“BottleloN mein paani bharke fridge mein rakh do!”, a voice shouted at me with both the intensity to wake me up from the soundest of sleeps and the fear that disobeying the orders would mean to risk a near-death experience. Of all the irritating orders that a mom can throw at her child, this takes all three medals and the consolation prize with no close competition. When there’s a water filter, it requires you to hold the empty bottle in one hand and either lift or press down the tap to start the flow. As the time passes by, you cannot do anything, but watch the water fill up knowing that nothing you do now can increase the flow of water. But, at the same time, the bottle starts becoming heavier and heavier, and you run the risk of the bottle slipping away.

A productive use of your analytical part of your brain would be to slowly lower the bottle and meticulously put it down, and place it in such a way that the water stream enters the bottle without as much touching the sides of the bottle’s mouth. But the negative side of this, in case your life wasn’t hard enough already, is that the water stream becomes thicker and thicker. It requires tremendous calculation to place it in such a position that not a single drop falls out of the bottle and its mouth matches the thickness of the stream. However, you cannot place the empty bottle at a pre-determined fixed position and then switch on the tap because the force of the stream has enough power to kick the bottle side-ways and make you feel like a loser. So, the only way for you to fix it to the ground would be to slowly lower it while filling it which makes sure that the bottle has gained enough water for it to stand firm and face the eccentric force exerted by the stream of water, both harum-scarum to form itself as a smooth flow and indifferent to where it’s going to land.

If that wasn’t all, the huge water tank of 25 litres which is attached upside down to the filter chooses to replace the space earlier occupied with water that is now flowing down with air. The only source of such air is the same damn tap through with the water is running down. This not only makes the rough flow of water even rougher and causes problems to its trajectory leading to the bottle mouth, but also makes huge bubbles of air rush up from the bottom of the tank to its top, causing vibrations and disturbances which make the water flow even more bizarre!

All of that is when there is a damn filter with a tap! But what when the water container is an earthen pot and you are now required to dip in a jug, pull it out, and empty it into the bottle. One good thing about this is that you can place the bottle on the ground and hold it with one hand while you run a stream of water from the jug to the bottle mouth, while at the same time determining the thickness of the stream by adjusting the height of the jug. It’s not all good though. It requires skills of making a fair judgement of how much water a jug should be filled with in order to make sure that the bottle is fully filled up, while at the same time, there is no excess of water remaining in the jug after the completion of this tedious task. There is no tap for you to simply release it in order to stop the flow. You are either expected to flow back the excess water into the pot, an undesirable choice, or to gulp down the water yourself, which eventually, will increase your visits to the washroom by two. (Argh!)

If you manage to do all of this and have half a dozen filled up water bottles, you are not done before you accomplish another irritating task – to place these damn bottles in the already swamped refrigerator. Why is it that these bottles cannot get some permanent reserved place in the fridge? I know that I’ve picked them from all the four corners of the house, but that, by no means, would mean that its place in the fridge is taken up with butter, milk, eggs, and the forsaken sambar, dhaniya, and masala powders! Touching any of them would let out a whiff of those powders from the opening of their packets. You are now expected to rearrange all of these and find place for the uncompromising Tupperware bottles with a bulging base. There’s anger, anguish, and frustration when, after placing three bottles in a row, you find that there is some space left at one of the corners enough to place something, but nothing out of the things you have!

Once you manage to get done with all of it, hoping that the household consumes as less water as possible to push away another such episode, you are not just cranky, but also out of energy. And by the time your nervous system begins to relax and you return to the worthy things of your life, “BottleloN mein paani bharke fridge mein rakh do!”. Oh, fuck!