Friday, September 23, 2005

The PowerCut

Darkness. Mankinds greatest fear since evolution. Most people deepest fears evolve in darkess and hence mankind despises it to extremes.

Yesterday Velachery came to a standstill when it was made to suffer in darkness. The moon looked prettier than usual but unfortunaltely not many were ready to share my enthusiasm or poetic sense at that point of time. Literally i could feel the meaning of PowerCut as everyone seemed to be deprived of power and people behaved as if without electricity mankind never survived. The powercut brought me memories of my childhood and college days.

As a child i used to hug my mother out of the fear of darkness after i saw some stupid sitcom where a character got killed in a power cut sequence.I remember times when power cuts were as regular as Ganguly's batting failures in test matches. It happened every saturday and i remember how everyone would finish their samayal activities earlier on saturday.

The college days powercut are cute to remember. Immediately after power cut we used to play hide and seek. Nobody enevr knew what or who hit them and it was damn fun for everyone ...except the sufferer. We used to play Anthakshari where everyone singing talents(or the lack of it) came to lights (!!). We used to walk along the road in the moonlight talking about everything from Bush to babes. Most of us used to stare at the Ladies hostel and wonder what they must be thinking at this time:-)

I particularly loved power cuts during exam times. It was a good pretex to keep the book down and avoid studying although there were pazhams who studied under candle lights. Otherwise even if u dont want to study you had to force the ritual after watching the rest do it.

We seem to be pampered by technology. When i told my 8 year old niece about how i got lost in my childhood, she asked innocently "U did not have a cell phone to call?" She talks as if people lived in rock ages before cell phones came to existence. Powercuts are the rare times when people listen to radios and i could see it that every house in the locality had Suriyan or Mirchi shouting at the top of their voices. Also it was a relief away from the idiot box as we all friends chatted endlessly till everyone fell asleep tired of the days chores.

My roommate seemed so much pissed off that he decided to go to his company and sleep in the dormitory. Another friend of mine told how the dormitory in his company got filled after employess living nearby realized that power was not to come at the earliest.

Have we become slaves of technology? People did survive before us without these luxuries, then why do we behave as if we would be dead without them?

10 comments:

Harish said...

Vee Jay
Very true. Power cuts seem to mend the distance among people. Its a just a lame excuse ot be together i guess.

Harish said...

Nalin..Welcome
Oops...no plagiarism here :-)
Just seemes that we wise people thought on the same lines :-)

Harish said...

Uma
I donno what ur once upon a time was..
Now velachery is possibly the most happening place with most of the IT bachelors settled out.
Its damn not the same it was when i saw it 5 years before.

Sonal said...

You have a nice blog harish..thx for visiting my blog...:-)

Peelamedu_bulls said...

Maams, sorry maams, late-a check panren.
Well I truly went back some years that day. Widout any noise to disturb, widout the noise of the ceiling fan, it was a sleep of a lifetime.

Harish said...

Welcome Sonal :-)
Thx a lot for the comments...

Harish said...

Maams
I wonder how u slept in the puzhukkamaana climate after a day full in a/c
U r great maams......

Vani Viswanathan said...

good post!
uhh..more than anything else, a powercut freaks me out because i can't have the fan....i can survive without anything in a power cut...but not the fan!
and your niece....ava enna...even i can't believe how we can now live without a cell phone..as in people we've seen using a cell phone...i don't use mine when i go back to india, coz i don't find the need...as i never was with a cell phone in india..but here i can't survive an hour without it!

Harish said...

Vani
Thats the trouble...one of my friend said that his kutti cousin while in the beach exclaimed "Anna, ingae fan maadhiriyae kaathu varadu illa"
Cant survive without cellphone??Any "SPECIAL" reason(you-know-that reason)??

PreethZzZ The Original said...

nice post! in India when their were powercuts the thing I used to miss most was the fan! Geez the heat! After I came to Australia when i was just 4 years old I used to keep asking my aunt why there was no powercut despite heavy rains! LOL!