Walkeshwar Reservoir is a key part of Bombay’s fresh-water supply in the novel: when it and the city’s main water pipes are damaged on Christmas Day, the loss of reliable water reshapes urban life. The crisis reaches beyond public infrastructure, drawing thirsty stray cats into the better-watered homes of Methwold’s Estate and giving the reservoir’s destruction an unexpected domestic consequence.

Setting and Urban Crisis

The reservoir enters the account against a backdrop of political uncertainty and worsening hardship. After the general election, the Central Government vacillates over whether Bombay should be partitioned, what state or states it should belong to, and whether the city should become a capital or an independent state. Riots proliferate as inhabitants press the government to decide. A severe drought compounds the unrest: roads crack, and villagers are driven to kill their cows.

Damage to the Water Supply

On Christmas Day, loud explosions strike Walkeshwar Reservoir and the main fresh-water pipes. The pipes, described as lifelines for the city, begin sending fountains of water into the air. Newspapers speculate about saboteurs and debate the criminals’ identities and political affiliations, but the account does not establish who caused the damage. The destruction is presented as part of a wider emergency in which drought and political disorder converge, while the failure of the city’s water system makes the crisis immediate and material.

The Cats at Methwold’s Estate

In the days after the water supply is destroyed, Bombay’s stray cats gather wherever water remains relatively plentiful. They converge on better-off neighborhoods, where houses have overhead or underground tanks, and Methwold’s Estate is overwhelmed. Cats enter sitting rooms, overturn flower vases to drink the water, occupy bathrooms, and slurp from water closets; servants cannot drive them out. Their numbers ruin gardens, leave the Estate’s ladies helpless, and make sleep impossible as the animals’ cries continue at night.

The residents’ private water stores therefore become a refuge from the city’s shortage—and a magnet for the animals displaced by it. Nussie Ibrahim tells Amina that it is the end of the world. The episode makes the reservoir’s failure legible not only through damaged pipes and public speculation, but through the sudden disorder inside homes: a civic resource crisis crosses the boundaries of property and household, bringing the city’s wider distress into the Estate.