The water tanker

“Paani le lo! Paani [Water for sale! Water]!”

Don’t go rushing to bring out your storage vessels just yet. This water tanker is a tad small. Made using a plastic bottle, an old rubber chappal, a short length of a plastic pipe and wooden sticks, this ‘tanker’ can carry maybe a glass of water.  

Balvir Singh, Bhawani Singh, Kailash Kanwar and Moti Singh – all children of Sanwata, ages 5 to 13 – made this toy after watching how the arrival of a water tanker twice a week is met with joy by their parents and others in their village in this eastern corner of Rajasthan.

Dry earth stretches for miles around here, and there is no ground water, only a few large ponds scattered sparsely in the orans (sacred groves) around.

The children sometimes replace the water tank with a carrier – a plastic jar cut in half. When this reporter enquired on the process, they told us that collecting the various parts does take time as they have to forage for scrap.

Once the sturdy frame is ready, they steer the toy with its wobbly wheels using a length of metal wire, moving around from the shade of the ker tree (Capparis decidua) to their homes, all within shouting distance of each other.