In the West, where most people have access to a regular supply of clean water, we often take for granted our good fortune in having the giver of life available on tap.

The same cannot be said of the many millions of people in developing countries for whom good clean water is a scarce and precious resource. For such people, water takes on an almost quasi-religious significance, due not just to its scarcity but to its regular use in purification rituals.

It is this attitude, so prevalent in much of the developing world, that is encapsulated in Imtiaz Dharker's "Blessing." Splashed into a tin mug, water speaks with "the voice of a kindly god," an appropriate expression to use given the immense spiritual value that water has in the poverty-stricken community depicted in the poem.

Whenever a pipe bursts in this community and bestows its riches upon the local people, a congregation coming from the huts can immediately be observed.

The word congregation is, of course, traditionally associated with a group of people attending a religious service. To some extent, that's precisely what the slum-dwellers of the poem are doing as they grab whatever implement they can lay their hands on in order to receive the blessings of water. Once again, we can observe the spiritual significance that water enjoys among the local people.