Last week, I found myself humming alongside B J Thomas’ lovely “Raindrops keep falling on my head”.

The Delhi skies, which have become kind, had various radio stations making the most of the pitterpatter and played some of the best rain song collections I’ve heard. After all, isn’t rainfall one of the most blessed gifts from nature?

I remember the days my sister Monica and I would go to the press with our father, no matter how grey the skies. As monsoons came and went, we realised we had to fulfill our father’s dream and make the MBD Group what it is today. Democratic World is one of those big dreams we have realised. With DW the idea is to inspire, to share tales of victories and failures, and lessons that come from both.

By the time you read this piece, monsoons would have already cast their spell on you. But you must have also noticed how the weather gods have been playing their tricks too often on us. Like His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa featured in our Looking Back section says “We have been abusing our environment for far too long, it is really about time for us to heal the environment.”

For there are regions reeling under the effect of unexpected floods, with cities such as Mumbai getting virtually held up because of rains. And then there is Delhi, which has been witnessing a rather elusive monsoon for a few years.

So what can we do to address these water woes? Rainwater harvesting could just be the big answer to a lot of small problems.

I know the rising pollution levels, global warming, shrinking natural resources is scary, but then I go back to my father’s words. He often said, “Life is a marathon with three stages. The starting line, the half-way there, and the finish line.”

And although they say the finish line is always the hardest, in my opinion it’s the half-way that’s the challenge. It’s here when your hopes start to die. The more you run, the further the finish line seems. But that is the time when you stick to the fight. As my father used to say, it’s when things seem worst that you mustn’t allow yourself to quit.

Let’s all draw from our experiences. Why, India has had a tradition of rainwater harvesting, each unique to its geography. There are zings in Ladakh — small tanks that collect melted glacier water; the ramtek model in Maharastra, tanks called kere in Karnataka, cheruvu reservoirs in Andhra Pradesh to store runoff water, dungs or jampois (small irrigation channels linking rice fields to streams) in the Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal, and step wells called vas in Gujarat.

Isn’t it time we tuned into our traditional wisdom and saved water for our future generations?