The Power Cut!

A cyclone has been predicted to hit Odisha in the next 24 hours. It’s 11th of October today, about 6:30 in the evening and the sky is completely dark. It’s raining! The shower is not very heavy but it has a cyclonic feeling! Today, the morning arrived with a windy atmosphere. Everybody is busy stocking things for the next few days, and so is my mom! We (my twin sister and I) were asked to charge our phones, the torches and even cameras. All are geared up to face the cyclonic storm- ‘PHAILIN’. IMD says it’s going be really severe. While all the older ones in the families are getting prepared to face a disaster, our genius generation is busy updating their statuses on Facebook and Whatsapp! Our family is all set! A tub and about 10 – 12 bottles of mineral water stored, 5 -6 packets of instant noodles, 4 packets of biscuits and of course the Rs 80/kg potatoes! How can we miss those precious potatoes! All set for heavy rains, but wait, are we really ready? No, I don’t think so! Without recharging our phones with ‘internet packs’ and ‘SMS packs’, things are never complete. The heavy rains have started, winds are blowing faster than before, and my sister along with my father has gone out of the house to get our phones recharged. This time, I shed some notes out of my pocket money with pleasure. As soon as they leave, I lock the house, shut all the windows to avoid rain water from entering into the rooms and wait for them to get back. A few minutes have passed and everything in the house seems dark, guess what! There’s a ‘power cut’! As expected, the power supply has been stopped due to fast blowing winds. Luckily we have an inverter at home, so it is not completely dark in the house. I open the front door of the house and sit on the staircase, watching the rain shower its droplets on the land. The wind is still blowing and is getting faster, it touches my skin, it’s cool, it’s enjoyable and this feeling drags me to my childhood days when there was no inverter at home. The moment there would be a power cut, everything would turn completely dark! All the tasks that we were busy in would come to a pause immediately and everyone would start hunting for a candle or an emergency light. The power cuts in my childhood were quite frequent especially in the summers. We were used to such sudden darkness. The doors and windows would be opened and all of us at home would sit on the stairs or on the floor near the main entrance door. In India it is a ritual to sing songs of all genres of bollywood music at a family get together. It is called as ‘Antakshri’. There was a song for every occasion. In our house the singing time was usually the power cuts! A candle would be lit in the drawing room and we would start singing at all volumes, enjoying the wind as well as the darkness. The feeling of every song would also increase. Sometimes we would start beating our hands on the floor or the plates with the spoons to accompany the song being sung with music. In our family, many of us have melodious voices, especially my nani’s voice. Oh! She sings so well! In summers she would often come to our house from Delhi as it gets too hot there. Whenever she would be here with us, the entertainment level would increase by four times. It was fun! Songs of all times would be sung, right from the 50’s, 60’s to the present. That one session made us enjoy the old time rhythms and made our parents listen to compositions of the present. It was amazing! Nobody in the family would miss this hour of the musical evening. Then after some time the lights would be suddenly on and that would mark the return of power! The moment we would see the lights on, the Antakshri would be over and the race to reach the candle first and blow it off would begin. I and my sister would be the participants of this race. I shake my head and realize I was deep in my sleep thinking of my past. I wake up and my thought is over and I am back in the present. Now finally everybody has come back home, the power is also back but it makes no difference. The inverter does not let us light up a candle, it keeps the lights on. There is no race, no darkness and no antakshri, because now things don’t come to a pause with a power cut... Life Moves On!!!