Parched
It was the first time she had seen a swimming pool in her 16 years of life. Anuya stared at the water rippling and spilling over the sides as all the children played gleefully. Coming from a small hamlet far from this city, water was like liquid gold, maybe even more precious. She took up the job of cleaning the sports centre as she wanted to send home as much money as she could to help her family cope with the aftermath of the drought. But seeing herself surrounded by water, it stung her deeply. Her mind was flooded with images of her mother carrying water back to their home from so far away, for her three children in the baking hot sun, the memory of her little sister, who didn’t make it through, and she felt a lump in her throat. She wanted to cry, but it seemed to her that her eyes had dried up forever.