‘Water’ is a reflective narrative poem, which is used in the poem as a concrete witness to the practice of untouchability and as a metaphor for social injustice and oppression. In the first five stanzas, The poet mentions the instances in which water served as a witness for the practice of untouchability. Then she presents her own experience of the sufferings that she underwent to get ‘water’ for day-to-day needs. Next, she cites the incident of the Tsunami wave which swallowed a great number of villages. The poet vents her anger against the destruction caused by ‘water’. She remarks that water, which has ignited many struggles and quarrels between people of villages and people of the ‘Wada’, can cause blood to run in streams.
However, the same water can also sit innocently in a Bisleri bottle appearing very innocuous. Here, the poet tries to highlight the situational irony in these lines. The very same water which has caused centuries-old wars of attrition between people has now become a marketable commodity, which anyone can buy. Thus, this marketable commodity now seems to erase from people’* memory the practices of untouchability, for which it had been a witness for centuries.
