We mixed cement and sand in some rough proportion with
water. Within a day we had the bricks placed one over the other with
the cement mixture holding it all together. This was easy stuff I
thought as I wrote out my record of how many bricks and the quantity of
cement and sand we had used to construct the bed.
Next day, I dutifully wet the construction twice as instructed in order
to have the cement set. Imagine my shock when on the third day I found
that our entire tank was shaking and ready to collapse. I rushed off
next door to my neighbour Guru who took one look at the tank and told
me that we would have to take down the whole thing and start from
scratch again. Apparently we had not used the right proportion of
cement and sand mixture, or laid the bricks right. Nor had we laid any
foundation for the structure. Masonry was not that simple, I realized.
I immediately got down to carefully removing each brick without
damaging it as the bricks were to be re-used. Guru, the expert mason,
then came over to construct the tank, and I helped. In fact, we built
two tanks that day: one large and one medium. I then prepared the
vermipits and Yesu, our maid, was instructed to henceforth put all the
household wastes (except paper and plastic) into the pits, alternating
between the different ones.
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