The Bahatian

What spoilt the party for the Mathina village water cartel was the increasing awareness by the residents that something was wrong in matters water. Many of the peasants’ children, especially the highly educated, were woke ones, and this is the lot that gave elders a hard time with grating questions. And the newcomers - those who bought plots recently and settled in the area - too realized something was wrong. Some of them were filth rich individuals, who, tired of urban life, have come to seek the solace of countryside, or were retirees who had bought plots and build their dream homes. They could not understand the water politics and why individual water needs had to be dictated by few individuals in the water office for ages.

Mathina village comprises of nine clusters, better known as settlement schemes. Each cluster, which is a village in itself, has a maximum of two hundred homesteads, but the number is increasing as the once vast individual farmlands are disappearing after being subdivided into minuscule pieces and sold as plots. It is now assuming a cosmopolitan face with a burgeoning population.   There are ranges of hills to the east of the village with at least three perennial springs in two of the forested hills. Two spring waters form part of the tributaries that flows swiftly downhill to join a big river that was known as River D. I say known because presently River D is a dry seasonal channel – flowing during those three wet months before petering out. We shall see how the river died a slow death.