THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two whole years after it celebrated the 75th birthday of the capital city’s first drinking water supply scheme, the Kerala Water Authority (KWA) is still hitched to a fascinating quest; to unravel the mystery surrounding the men who made it a reality. The KWA has now sought the help of the public to collect details and old photographs, if any, of officials who built the Wellington Water Works so that a Platinum Jubilee souvenir can be published.‘’We have a portrait, an oil, of Balakrishna Rao, who was executive engineer and later promoted chief engineer by the king, at our main office. While the others’ names are known to us, information on them is sketchy,’’ said Anil Raj, secretary, Jala Authority Cultural and Sports Samithi, which is bringing out the souvenir on behalf of the KWA.Balakrishna Rao hailed from Karnataka. Details about him were supplied by Ravi, the son of Kumara Swamy Pillai, the first supervisor, KWA officials said. But the others - people like Natesha Iyer, chief engineer; F J Jacob, also chief engineer; Thomas and K K Kartha, assistant engineers and Neelakanta Pillai, overseer - remain mystery men.All that is known about F J Jacob is that he prepared the first proposal for the scheme to bring water from Aruvikkara to the city, a distance of 15 kilometres. His plan was to fetch the water using an open channel. That was in 1920. But it was Balakrishna Rao, to whom the project was later transferred, who warned that an open channel would lead to pollution. Consequently, cast-iron pipes were used.The scheme was originally designed to supply water to the Fort area - 5,000 connections to mostly royals and British residents. Viceroy and Governor General of British India Lord Wellington inaugurated it on December 13, 1933, by sipping a glass of water taken from one of three hydrants which formed part of the scheme.Coming back to the officers, chief engineer Natesha Iyer lived in the Bhaktavilasom Bungalow, which is now the AIR HQ. The present AG’s Office at Statue was his office. Little, though, is known about Thomas and K K Kartha, but the KWA recently managed to scrape up one tiny info about overseer Neelakanta Pillai - that he was a bachelor.‘’We have a group photo showing about 175 people, taken on the day the scheme was commissioned. No names are given, and we can’t identify anybody. Except for Balakrishna Rao, though. He wears a turban and because his portrait is there at our office,’’ Anil Raj said.
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