Thirst - Softcover

Bajaj, Varsha

 
9780593354414: Thirst
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0593354419 ISBN 13: 9780593354414
Verlag: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

This New York Times Bestseller features a heroic girl who fights for her belief that water should be for everyone.

Minni lives in the poorest part of Mumbai, where access to water is limited to a few hours a day and the communal taps have long lines. Lately, though, even that access is threatened by severe water shortages and thieves who are stealing this precious commodity—an act that Minni accidentally witnesses one night. Meanwhile, in the high-rise building where she just started to work, she discovers that water streams out of every faucet and there’s even a rooftop swimming pool. Then one day, Minni encounters the water mafia boss and faces her biggest dilemma yet—should she expose him even if it means risking her job . . . and maybe her life? How did her future get so complicated?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Varsha Bajaj (varshabajaj.com) is the author of the middle-grade novels Count Me In (a Global Read Aloud Selection) and Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood (shortlisted for the Cybils Award and included on the Spirit of Texas Reading Program). She also wrote the picture books The Home Builders and This Is Our Baby, Born Today (a Bank Street Best Book). She grew up in Mumbai, India, and when she came to the United States to obtain her master’s degree, her adjustment to the country was aided by her awareness of the culture through books. She lives in Houston, Texas.

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1
 
Sanjay and I sit on the top of the hill and stare out at the huge, never-ending Arabian Sea. The salty breeze brings a little relief from the heat.
     “It feels like the world is made of water from up here,” I say. “That there’s enough of it for everyone.”
     But I know there isn’t.
     In the distance, the flyover bridge soars into the sky and snakes across the bay. Its lights twinkle and outshine the stars in the night sky.
     “The sea link bridge looks like an M,” I say. “It does,” my brother says. “M for Mumbai?”
     “M for me—Minni,” I say. “And for Monsoon. I hope this year we have a good one.” Lately the monsoon season comes later and later, which means less and less water.
     Although water surrounds my island city, most of the people I know are always struggling to get enough. We don’t have running water in our house. We just have a tap outside that we share with our neighbors. Ma has to wake up at the crack of dawn to fill our buckets because the authorities only supply water for two hours every morning and for an hour in the evening when the shortages aren’t too bad. The rest of the day, the tap is dry. Every home has a big barrel outside the house, to store collected water for the day.
     “Remember when Ma and the other women draped our leaky old tap with a marigold garland as if it was a god they could charm with flowers?” Sanjay says.
     I do remember, and we laugh, although it’s sad to think it was probably a frustrating day when the water trickled rather than flowed.
     I look out at the ocean. Part of our view is blocked by billboards with glamorous Bollywood movie stars—billboards that are larger than our house.
     The houses in our neighborhood are small and crammed on top of each other, but they do face the sea. Rich people who live in skyscrapers pay millions for the same ocean view. Last year, a charity helped paint our homes and fix our leaking tin roofs. Some said it was because the people whizzing past in their air-conditioned cars on the flyover bridge didn’t want to see decaying, moldy “slums.”
     I chose yellow for our house. I helped to sand down the years of moss and mold from our old tin and concrete walls. Baba, Ma, Sanjay, and I dipped our brushes in yellow, and the first coat of paint was like a ray of bright sunshine getting rid of the darkness. My neighbors chose purple and blue, and red and orange. Our street looks like a rainbow.
     “Sanjay,” I ask, “will we have to worry about water when we are grown up?”
     For a long moment, he is silent.
     So I answer myself. “No. No, we won’t.”
     I point at the cluster of tall buildings shimmering in the distance where Ma works in the afternoons. I say, “One day, we’ll live in one of those tall shiny buildings, where water runs from taps.”
     “Okay,” he says, and links his arm in mine, as if I’m predicting the future. “Like the boy who was born here and studied computers and now has an office in a building and employs sixty people.”
     I nod.
     “Can you imagine,” I say, “that on top of some of those high-rise buildings they have a swimming pool full of water? Enough for our whole neighborhood to bathe. How do you think they built a pool on top of a building? Wouldn’t you love to see it?”
     Sanjay laughs. “You and your questions!”
     “Well, they are awfully lucky to have so much water to spare . . .”
     “Minni,” he says, “I wish there was a way to make all this seawater drinkable. Then there’d be enough for us all.”
     “There is a way!” I say. “Our teacher told us it’s possible—she said it’s called desalination. But it’s expensive, and you need a huge factory to strain the salt out.”
     “Look how smart you are,” he says. “You will live in a fancy building!”
     “You too,” I say.
     Sanjay is fifteen, and after he graduated from tenth grade last year, he got a job in a restaurant. He dreams of being a chef, but for now he does food prep. It’s good he likes what he’s doing, because we didn’t have money for college anyway.
     I dream for him too. Chef Sanjay.
     I pretend to be a palmist and study both our hands. “Could I be like Meena Aunty?” I ask.
     “Why not? Knowing you, you can do anything you set your mind on doing,” he says. “And plus you’re even named after Ma’s sister.”
     “Like her, I will finish school and get a good job,” I wish aloud.
     “Hmmm, Minni Meow, banker,” he says, teasing me with my childhood nickname. “But I think I see you more as a scientist.”
     “That’d be cool—or maybe a builder,” I say dreamily. “I bet those high-rise roofs don’t leak like ours after the monsoon. Wouldn’t it be great if ours didn’t? And if they didn’t get so hot?”
     We head home as the sun starts to dip. There is a line for the water tap on the main street. Water pressure must be weak today. When it doesn’t get through the web of makeshift hoses, people must line up at the main source. The water line snakes around the block, and we hear the sounds of insults being hurled and see some men shoving one another. There are shrieks. Women scatter. Angry noises fill my ears.
     Another fight’s breaking out.
     We don’t wait to see what happens. Sanjay grabs my hand, and we turn around and away from the scene and find our way home through alleys and side streets. My heart thumps along with my running feet.
     Our father has told us a million times over the years, If you invite trouble, it will come. It will stay for chai and for dinner.
     We definitely don’t want to invite trouble.
 
2
 
Ma makes the most delicious daal in the world, and my father has eaten two bowls of it. “I might make the best tea and pakodas, but your ma is the greatest at everything else,” he says, and sighs in contentment.
     Ma blushes whenever Baba praises her cooking.
     Ma’s potatoes melt in your mouth too, and I’ve saved a few for the last bite of my meal. Sanjay’s right hand hovers over my plate, and I slap it away.
     “Minni Meow won’t even give me a potato!” he says dramatically.
     “Ma,” I complain, “tell him to stop calling me that—I’m not five anymore.”
     But I can’t help giggling and give him the bite anyway. I’ve never been able to resist his goofy ways.
     We’re seated on the floor in the center of our living space. Curtains separate this from our parents’ sleeping area, and Sanjay and I sleep up in a small loft. Never-ending sounds of honking horns and smells of cooking...

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Verlag
Penguin Young Readers Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0593354419
ISBN 13 
9780593354414
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
208
Kontakt zum Hersteller
preigu GmbH & Co. KG
mail@preigu.de

Lengericher Landstr. 19
Osnabrück
Niedersachsen
49078
Deutschland

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