"The 'Mumbai Water Explorer' workshop was held at Premchand Roychand Gallery, CSMVS, Mumbai on 13th September 2025. There were about 15 students from different schools across Mumbai. From St. Xavier's Boys' Academy, my friend Rushil Narkar from class 7-1 and I, Maahir M Masani from class 6-1, were lucky enough to be part of this workshop.

The workshop started at around 11:20 am with an introductory session. The team of Local Gyan had placed a Map of Mumbai, and we had to give a brief introduction of ourselves, including our name, school, standard, and place of residence. We had our names on sticky labels and had to place them on the Map of Mumbai at the location where we stay. It was a good start to find our location on the Map of Mumbai.

We had already learned about water in school, but here we got some practical knowledge. All of us were given a cup of water to taste, and we had to give our feedback on the taste. After that, we were given another cup of water to taste and asked about the difference in taste. For sure, one was normal water and the other was salty. We were informed about the differences between ponds, lakes, rivers, creeks, bays, oceans, etc.

At home, we get water from our taps. In the workshop, we were given a practical demonstration of the flow of water, starting from rainfall and how water takes the form of lakes, ponds, rivers, streams, etc., and then is stored in dams, water treatment plants, reservoirs, pump stations, and supplied to particular areas, societies, buildings, and households. Mumbai gets its water supply from Modak Sagar Dam and Tansa Dam, but the larger portion of water is supplied from Vaitarna Dam (Nashik).

We were also shown why it's essential to save water through a demo. Additionally, we were shown how much time it takes to fill a 20-liter bucket (it was an average of 2 minutes). We were told to calculate how much water we use for bathing and how much water we and our family require for drinking and other household purposes.

At the end, we were given a booklet with a Map of Mumbai and an exercise to find out our total daily consumption. We were asked to pledge to reduce water wastage in our daily lives. In the last part of the session, Mr. Rahul briefed us about drinking water fountains. Mr. Rahul is a key member of the Mumbai Pyauv Project of BMC, where they are in the process of restoring historic pyaus. We were given a Pocket Badge of Water Warrior by the Local Gyan Team.

The session got over by around 2:30 pm. I would like to thank Ms. Valentina for sharing this workshop invitation with us, Mr. Rajesh and Ms. Sonam from the Local Gyan team who arranged this workshop, and Mr. Rahul who explained to us about historical pyaus.