I woke up this morning and walked down the corridor to the bathroom to brush my teeth and saw a few of my blockmates crowding around a single tap. I realised the reason for that when I turned on a tap and no water flowed out. Four days is how long we made it into the Golden Jubilee year of my college without a water problem. Well, that is not entirely true as my block has had no drinking water since I arrived here and possibly from well before that. But I attributed to the renovation works going on in the block and not to water shortage. Today, I was made to rethink. But fortunately enough, my block has a tap in each of the bathrooms which has water irrespective of availability of water in the other taps and that was the tap that had a crowd around. Nobody knows how exactly the pipes have been laid to allow this luxury (Yes! water is a luxury in an NITK hostel) and as usually is not the case, this is probably for lack of trying. As long as there is some source of water the students are simply too lazy or indifferent to actually bother finding out the working behind it, Civil guys and myself included. So we just call it the 'Magic Tap'. But what worries me is the prospect of summer. When we are facing a water shortage at a time when Mangalore and Udupi which are within a 50-km radius of my college have received heavy rainfall, the summer simply looks like doomsday. I'm hoping for the best though.