A Drop of Life begins innocently enough . It opens with a mother and daughter fetching water from a well in Kutch , India . ( See “ The ‘ Dream ’ of School for Impoverished Girls in Little Rann of Kutch , by Photojournalist Nikki Kahn ”) The daughter , Devi , is late to school . She runs to a tree to join her classmates gathered around a schoolteacher named Mira telling a story about a greedy man who tears apart a chicken for its golden eggs . The scene is full of laughter and color and warmth .
Across the world in New York City we are introduced to Nia , an African-American corporate executive who is responsible for a prepaid water meter project that will be installed in the village where Devi and Mira live . Nia is exhausted and anxious ; we quickly come to see why the project weighs on Nia ’ s conscience .
Kantayya ’ s choice of characters in A Drop of Life is deliberate . Again and again we hear how women of color all over the world are disproportionately affected by the global water crisis . In India alone , where water is celebrated and revered , a rural woman walks a staggering 14,000 km per year on average to collect water .
A Drop of Life forces us to confront what a statistic like this really means . Numbers are given a name , a history , a loss .
As the film continues , money on the meter runs out and the pump dries up . Sickness abounds . Nia travels to Kutch to check up
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