The Pulley system used in wells these days have almost ceased to exist in the Urban cities like Chennai, people don’t use these to drwa water from their wells.
Though a few households / public places use these, many have moved to Motors, Bore pumps as water is becoming scarcer. Also drawing water from these wells are an art, using these pulley’s, one needs to know when to start releasing the rope without hurting ones hands and when/how to start pulling the water filled bucket to the top again without hurting their hands.
A scene at a temple in Saidapet.
Well we had a well (pun?) in our house but when we constructed few more floors we had to close that well. We had water at just about 24 feet deep. I am talking till about 1985.
In my youth, it was one of the most enjoyable things to draw water from this well (it used to be pretty cool, coming from such depth) and bath pouring water over the body direct from the bucket that we used to draw the water. You can’t imagine the amount of pleasure we used to get in summer holidays, doing this for hours.
Other funny things used to be when a bucket or something kept on the wall of the well fell (well, fell, what a rhyme) into the well. Then we all will wait for the one tenant of our house who had the skill of going down the well to fetch what had fallen. Sometimes, we used use something called “Badhala Karandi – a five faced iron unexplainable thingy” and try to slowly grab what had fallen in. It was great fun taking out a fallen bucket with just its hold remaining in the rope.
🙂
Ram: Lovely tale athyamurthy, reminds me of my native and the water woes.