Lakshmaiyyah on his daily trips to and from the lake behind his house to fetch water for the tree under which his wife lays.
Ramakrishna (second from right) and his team digging a series of recharge wells at an apartment complex on Kanakapura Road. They keep digging until they hit a rock, going to roughly 20-feet deep, which normally takes a day per well.
Two men normally descend to the bottom—one digs and the other fills up the tray with mud and rocks.
The Manuvaddars are extremely proud of the fact that their hands and feet are the same colour as the earth they dig.
Ramakrishna throws a stone into an open well but would rather jump into it himself as he feels happiest in and around water. He hopes that as people’s attitudes change towards water usage, the profession will pick up enough for them to be able to survive the way he and generations before him did.
Gullies of Bhovi Palya are strewn with Uber taxis. Younger Manuvaddar men have seen this as an easy option out. The gender dynamics have shifted too—where once most women went out to dig wells, they now get more stability and pay as domestic help or cooks in neighbouring towns.
Ramakrishna feels the water being pumped up in the one borewell around their village. The first one the government built dried up, but this second one now has enough water for the entire village as well as the neighbouring one. He doesn’t know when this will run out too, though.