The talk presents the contextual study of historic water architecture, its hiatus, and the effort to revive the system to achieve water sufficiency exemplified by the case study of Birkha Bawari, a 21st-century subterranean building fashioned like a step-well, built in the water-stressed city of Jodhpur. The success of this contemporary iteration demonstrates the economic and architectural viability of reclaiming the indigenous water portfolio to mitigate the water crisis.