Tube Light

The kitchen tube light flickered. My thoughts too flickered. Was it the starter issue or anything larger? In the zone of life beyond sixty such questions became existential. I dragged myself and changed the starter from another tube light and the flickering continued. In the affairs of the kitchen darkness will not help. So, I trotted to the shop and asked the shop keeper at an electrical shop “do you have a tube light of two feet size?” the shopkeeper looked at me as if I was one such tube light. “Don’t you want to be LED” he retorted. I thought I don’t want to be led by the current crop of national leaders into the dark age.

At the next shop, the shop keeper said “I have one with the full set frame and all.” I choked and said “I don’t need to be framed. Just need a tube light, that is all.” Indeed, for anything and everything you are framed for sedition these days and under the law you can be kept in a jail for one long year. No question to be asked. Justice has got frozen. As it was evening and my walk was due, I decided to take a walk down the lane and look up other shop as well. One shop keeper said “it was outdated design.” I was wondering when will I will become outdated and be only a memory. I insisted and walked down further. Soon I had walked more than one kilometre. I was wondering if I should walk into another lane as well.

Then I was attracted to the message on a push cart. Cucumber for Rs 10 a kilo. I wondered what economics was that to be able to sell cucumber at such a low price. These days you manage to get a cuppa for that price or get a stick of nicotine. I stopped by and asked the vendor for sure and when he confirmed I asked him to pack one kilo. It was just then I noticed a small electrical shop.

He had the tube light I had wanted. Finally, the light in the middle of my walk. I walked back in a josh. Although the josh is the last thing you can find these days in the country what with lock down and spiralling down economy. The leaders continue with their promises. If you vote rightly you get free vaccination. No more job promises or trillion- dollar economy. Just a mere vaccine.

The tube light packet promised ‘cool daylight.’ That is a better promise I thought as I fixed the light back in the kitchen. The cool daylight filled the kitchen after sunset. I had no grievance against this Crompton light. Not a bad deal for a walk at the sunset hours.