Sabita Kaushal

The pavement burns the skin of my soles through my thick shoes, and the merciless sun blazes through my sunglasses making me squint in the blinding light. I look around for some shade but the tiny umbrella in my bag, my only saviour, proves useless. Delhi’s tree-lined streets are barren, the beautiful green shady canopies scarce .

A stepwell or ‘bawdi’ or ‘baori’, is exactly what the name suggests – a well with steps that lead down to the water. About 1000 years ago, a 13-storey deep water reservoir boasting 3500 steps was built to ensure that people in the arid Abhaneri region of Rajasthan had a dependable water source.

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At the start of the 20th century, India had nearly 40,000 tigers. That number came down to a mere 1827 in 1972. It took us just 75 years to almost wipe out an entire species!

But we woke up in the nick of time, launched ‘Project Tiger’, spent colossal amounts of money and energy and managed to double this number to 3642 by 2002.

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