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Time of India

Why São João is more than just a festival: It's about celebrating wells

In Goa , São João, the Feast Day of St John the Baptist , on June 24, celebrates water. By then, the monsoon has usually filled rivers, lakes and, most importantly, the wells on which many still depend. In summer, wells are cleaned so they fill easily when the rains come, ready for people to jump in on São João! The celebration is spreading. In pockets of Mumbai like Manori and Gorai, the festival is observed with lots of water splashed around and the floral crowns called koppels . Most Mumbaikars now use piped water, but old wells can be opened for the occasion. Even diasporic Goans in Australia, Canada and the UK celebrate São João, though often in a swimming pool. The connection with wells is important. St John baptised Jesus in a spring that fed the Jordan river, but wells are vital in that dry Eastern Mediterranean region. One of the oldest has been found in Cyprus, dated to around 8400 BCE, while one of the first stone-lined wells, from around 7000 BCE, was found near Haifa in Israel, in a site now drowned by the sea. Wells have always been seen as magical, connecting our surface world to the mysteries of underground aquifers. The still mysterious process of dowsing , where sites for wells are located using forked twigs, gives them an aura of magic even before they are dug. Wells often have guardian spirits, which links to the idea of wish-granting wells. Mumbai's Bhikha Behram Well, 300 years old this year, is sacred to the Parsi community . It is said to have been built after a Parsi trader was commanded to build it in a dream. Since the location was near the sea, his plan was ridiculed, but when it was finally dug, the water was not salty and has never run dry. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track default , selected Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Wells can be points of contention. Many caste-based battles in India have been fought over access to wells. 'Poisoning the well' isn't just a phrase for a type of argument but has been an actual tactic in wars. Yet, even when their water is tainted, wells have been of value, as is shown by Steven Johnson's book The Ghost Map . This tells the story of how London physician John Snow tracked a cholera epidemic in 1854 to one sewagetainted well. At that time illnesses were assumed to spread through 'miasma', bad air, but Snow proved that water was a vector as well, by tracing how victims across London had all drunk from that one well. Fears of well contamination have been growing in Goa. As poorly regulated building activity booms in rural areas across India, the threat of badly designed sewage systems poisoning aquifers is real. It makes people distrust wells and demand piped water, further pushing wells into disuse. Yet, in times of climate change, it is a folly to give up on wells. A recent private effort to test water in wells across the Goa valley showed that, despite intense building activity, the water quality was still quite good. They do need cleaning though and, ignoring the São João imperative, we hadn't done it for a few years. Early this summer, the well almost ran dry and we called in the cleaners. They emptied out the remaining water, except for a small pool at the bottom, and started removing years of silt. As the spouts for the springs were cleaned, we could see water trickling in again at once. With this year's early rains, the well was soon full again — and, amazingly, we could now see fish in it. Wells often have them, as a sign of the purity of the water, but we had never seen them before. The cleaners told us just a few fish were there who retreated to that last pool as it was cleaned. Now, with plentiful clean water, they were flourishing again, a sign of the enduring power of wells.