BENGALURU: We go through our lives navigating ambition, effort, and circumstances – under the impression of being the masters of our destinies. But nothing makes you feel as decapitated as a power cut in today’s times. Earthquakes, wars, and famines do not affect us anymore. But as the fan stops moving, and the world plunges into darkness – a sense of desolate powerlessness creeps into one’s soul. You feel like Virat Kohli in an IPL campaign – you’ve given everything you could, and lost! A power cut makes you believe in higher powers. It’s the only time atheists dust out their memories of God and shoot a silent prayer to the skies – a hope for a miracle.
In the days of yore, a power cut only meant the TV wouldn’t work for a bit. But today, our entire lives need some sort of charge. My watch, tablet, weighing scale, earphones – even this pen with which I am scribbling these notes in the dark. Power cuts make you realise how little control over our lives we actually have; That we might plan out our entire days, create the to-do lists, and reminders, and drink a litre of water. But there is very little we can do when the higher powers come into the picture. Which is why I respect the middle class of the ’90s. They had devised a way to make even power cuts enjoyable.
They took a mat, pillows, a torch, a water bottle, and some snacks – and walked up to the terrace. Families spoke to each other from across terraces. Someone sang a song or told a story. In the absence of intellectual stimulation, people simply played antakshari or listened to the radio. The old simply fanned themselves and eventually dozed off into sleep.
Power cuts were usually unleashed onto us in the summers. But one could always sacrifice an Amitabh Bachchan movie on Doordarshan if it meant skipping the ‘Holidays Homework’. The concept of Holidays Homework is one of the cruellest systems ever devised by human beings, and I’m surprised there hasn’t been a UN hearing about it in Geneva yet! Parents and schools conspired together to torture children.
Tuition teachers exploited this system like peddlers – circumventing the system of schools, grades, and exams. But these evil plans were dashed because the gods willed it. A thunderstorm, a light shower – and mere mortals would quickly turn off their little switches and resign to their fate. It was a holistic system of humans adapting to the ways of the gods. Humans turned their fates into an activity of joy, bonding, and happiness.
Today, a power cut feels like a curse from the netherworlds. Since the morning, I have been pacing from one room to the other – like Dasharatha after he sent Ram to the forest at
Kaikeyi’s behest. And mosquitoes – the undisputed worst species on earth – smell a power cut and rear their annoying, little heads and creep out of the dark corners of your house. Unlike an issue with the Railways, you cannot tweet about it to anybody. You simply wait, and peek into your neighbour’s house to check if the misery is being shared by everyone around you.
So dehumanising is the experience that the office begins to seem like a better space. That we’d rather have a boss sitting on our heads if only it meant that some charge was running through copper wires. A power cut is the most soul-crushing phenomenon of modern life. Among the many ‘Indian-isms’ that we use, the word ‘power cut’ seems the most appropriate.
(The writer’s views are his own)