today

August 19, 2006

Not in this case.

Aslam Shaikh and sister Shaheen were the first to taste Mahim creek's 'sweet' water, yesterday evening. In a couple of hours, there were at least 5,000 people, dipping their bottles into the smelly, murky waters, and swigging it down like manna. Among them, children, even infants, who were not only made to drink the water, but were also bathed in it. People in Mahim buy the 'sweet water' in plastic bottles normally used for storing Aab-e-Zamzam, the sacred water from Madina.

Pictures show decent people actually buying the water. PLEASE STOP IT.

It is almost certainly heavily polluted with poisonous chemicals and that gives the peculiar taste. In fact I would have to be very, very thirsty to drink the water in Mahim Creek at the best of times; it seems to me to taste like elephant urine.