Embodying a troubled wastewaterscape
Shristi, a 35 year old woman farmer from the Maratha caste said that since they started using wastewater to irrigate their crops, many villagers started feeling sick. At the start, they noticed that the water from the Sakarbai well smelled bad. Then some people started complaining about sore throat and infections, including fever, cold and cough, as well as skin irritations.
When used directly to irrigate the crops, some also noticed a green layer covering the soil. For this reason farmers often let water flow before irrigating, so that "contaminated particles get dispersed into the soil and the water is purified".
Shristi, a 35 year old woman farmer from the Maratha caste said that since they started using wastewater to irrigate their crops, many villagers started feeling sick. At the start, they noticed that the water from the Sakarbai well smelled bad. Then some people started complaining about sore throat and infections, including fever, cold and cough, as well as skin irritations.
When used directly to irrigate the crops, some also noticed a green layer covering the soil. For this reason farmers often let water flow before irrigating, so that "contaminated particles get dispersed into the soil and the water is purified".
We are all bodies of water...
"AS WATERY, WE EXPERIENCE OURSELVES LESS AS ISOLATED ENTITIES, AND MORE AS OCEANIC EDDIES: I AM A SINGULAR, DYNAMIC WHORL DISSOLVING IN A COMPLEX, FLUID CIRCULATION. THE SPACE BETWEEN OURSELVES AND OUR OTHERS IS AT ONCE AS DISTANT AS THE PRIMEVAL SEA, YET ALSO CLOSER THAN OUR OWN SKIN — THE TRACES OF THOSE SAME OCEANIC BEGINNINGS STILL CYCLING THROUGH US, PAUSING AS THIS BODILY THING WE CALL “MINE.” WATER IS BETWEEN BODIES,
BUT OF BODIES, BEFORE US AND BEYOND US, YET ALSO VERY PRESENTLY THIS BODY, TOO. DEICTICS FALTER. OUR COMFORTABLE CATEGORIES OF THOUGHT BEGIN TO ERODE. WATER ENTANGLES OUR BODIES IN RELATIONS OF GIFT, DEBT, THEFT, COMPLICITY, DIFFERENTIATION, RELATION."
[Neimanis, A. (2013). Feminist subjectivity, watered. Feminist Review, 103(1), 23-41.]
As much as we contaminate water, metabolizing it into waste, by reflection, water also contaminates us, our soil and more-than-human companion species. In Pravah, contaminated water brings prosperity, but also rashes on skin and throat infections; it changes the colour of the landscape mutating it into green shades and it changes ecologies.
Contamination emerges physically, through changes in water composition, but also sensorially, experienced through the skin, in the soil, and the health of animals and plants around us.