Running For Water

Sharanya was running. She was running for a long time now. She couldn't even remember how long she had been running! It seemed like an eternity. But she couldn't stop now. If she stopped... She did not even want to think of the consequences, so she kept running! How she wished she could go back to her past when she was a little kid and she would run for fun... She would run, jump, hop and just lay down on the grass, looking at the clear blue skies above, the sun peeping from behind some scanty white clouds. It was a good time to be alive, she remembered. 

But then, the war had happened. The war of the world, more like the war that destroyed the world. The countries had unleashed the deadliest bombs on each other... Killing more than 90% population in a single night. It was as if the devil himself had descended upon the Earth, filling the ears of the world leaders, taking away their powers of thinking, and their sanity and rationality as well.

 The ones who were left behind were not the lucky ones. They were left behind to a future that was full of horrors cast upon the Earth by the warring Human Beings. Everything was destroyed. The waters bodies were contaminated with radioactive materials, the soil was soiled with radioactivity, species of animals and plants were wiped off the planet. Even the Oceans were not spared. The 10% of life left on Earth had gone underground for a long time... And once again Charles Darwin's Survival Theory had been proved right. 

Then the clouds began to dissipate, but there was no source of energy, the Sun wasn't yet shining upon them, just a dull glow lighted up the sky every day, so the survivors knew it was day and when the dull haze became darker, they knew the night had arrived. Then they all came together and found new ways to survive. The most important task at hand was finding potable water. They had succeeded in finding a small pocket of deep wells underground and then they had invented the water wheels, that helped pull water out of the deep wells. But there was no electricity or other power source to run those wheels. And that is where Sharanya was busy today. The people had formed teams that took turns running around the wells with the water wheels harnessed to their backs. Today it was Sharanya's turn. If she stopped running now, her entire village would have to go thirsty. So Sharanya kept running!