Travelling back in time, I recall having lived in homes where there was no running water. All our water requirements had to be drawn from a well. While the women in the house were tasked with the job of drawing water from the well for cooking purposes since ritual purity was involved here, for other purposes such as bathing, washing clothes, watering the garden etc. the older children in the joint family were assigned the task.
Today, looking back on this chore through the rosy tinted glasses of nostalgia it seems like a pleasurable activity. But when we were actually at it we hated it. At first we needed to master the art of tying a noose knot. The knot was simple enough, but the thick and coarse coir rope on which the knot had to be made, made the task difficult for young hands. Then again we had to ensure that the shorter end of the rope was first passed over the pulley wheel hanging down from a tie beam supported by two columns on the sides of the well. If you were a keen student of physics you would have learnt in school that this pulley was an example of a simple machine which provided the mechanical advantage of pulling the rope down while the vessel at the end of the noose knot went up.
A small note on the shape of the vessel: Made of brass or bronze, the vessel was an evolved form of the earthen pots made by prehistoric man, but still goes back a long way to the Bronze Age. This later transformed to the stainless steel variety but even this has all but disappeared from homes now. Its chief characteristic was its narrow neck around which the rope with the noose knot could be tightened or loosened.
