Drinking Seawater - Sick !!!

It was again one of those sensational news that is flashing across all the news channels since friday. You can't blame them. There has been nothing interesting happening since Prince's rescue or maybe a couple of movie releases that the news channels are so busy promoting as 'news'. So when a salt water creek near Mahim beach, 'mysteriously' turns sweet, you'd expect news crew to be out there covering the sensational story.

I feel sad at the entire episode. Whether it is the news hungry media, all ready to make a mountain of a mole-hill, flashing it across all channels and hyping it as much as it can. Or 'we the people' who believe this to be a word from above, run on to the beaches, drinking this water in litres, unmindful of the potential risks it might have. I don't know who to feel more angry at. Can't the people see the colour of the fluid for god's sake? It almost looked like diluted 'coovum' water (nothing can beat 'namma' coovum when it comes to pollution). And people carrying it in bottles and cans. Man, don't they get water at home? And worse still, the thing that hurt me most, were the pictures on a news channel of a toddler being given this fluid in a bottle cap, which the parent was clearly doing for the camera, which the cameraman was obviously happy shooting. Awful! Get sick if you want, but why drag the poor baby with you. And, what was the cameraman doing. Just there to shoot videos was he?

Reports clearly say that this happened because ground water got mixed with sea water and reached surface being lighter. It is a scientific phenomena, which is surely interesting news. But consuming from the very source where the entire city dumps its unhygienic and toxic waste, and giving it to children, is news for all the wrong reasons. When are we going to grow up? Fishes drink seawater, not people and babies.