Posted on Sunday, July 12, 2009 | By Gautam | In
"Oh! The power's gone!!!"
And with this starts our raving and ranting and cursing and bad-mouthing the utility companies, the government, the system and pretty much anything upon which we can take out our frustration on! With the advent of April till August (in some cases much beyond than this), the dreaded power cuts start to materialise. Like a Ginnie out of a bottle. A gift to us by the power companies. With the temperature soaring in these months, the frequency of power cuts also goes up, charting unprecedented heights as the power cut hours break new records each year. For some, it has become a way or a part of their lives. For some, it helps keep track of time coz whether or not we like it, the religious audacity which is followed in executing the cuts on time will put even the British Generals to shame. Maybe all of us who need a lesson in punctuality can take a leaf out of this!!! Indian Railways and many other government offices can learn from the power company executives.
But this is not quite the motive with which I sat down to write this blog. There is, well an ignored side to all the power cuts which we hate so much because we're so very engrossed in the worldly pleasures which require electricity to run. Here is a list which will try to list out the positives of cuts-
- Save Money- what with all those long hours without electricity, your ACs and TVs and computers and what not of this world are dis-functional. The electricity bill which sends you those high voltage shocks are a bit benign. Thanks to those equipments not working.
- Eco-friendly- seriously, with all those coal powered generators getting a breather due to the power cuts, you can proudly wear the badge of being eco-friendly!!!
- Lesser spam- what do I do when I'm using my computer? I tweet or nudge or poke or scrap or blog (like right now) and spam the cyber space with all those terabytes of data. So do most of the people. So now with a power cut, all those over-worked servers can take a breather.
- Quality time- with a power cut, we tend to point our verbal guns towards our family, friends (in short, whoever's around). It lets you connect to your near and dear ones. With a cut during night time, one can even enjoy a candle lit dinner.
See, a power cut isn't such a bad thing after all. It has so many inherent qualities which we choose to ignore and desperately want to become a developed nation with no power cuts. Shame on us. We should thank our planners in the executive with such visionary skills.
Long live, err continue the power cuts.....
Power cuts are bad, very bad !
Money – the little money saved out of that meager consumption of electricity due to power cuts has to be spent on the Inverters which cost a fortune during the peak summer months. ( Most of us aren’t wise enough to buy them in advance) Another thing worth mentioning is about the emergency lights and torches – they have to be charged for hours together so that we don’t have to live in absolute darkness.
Quality time : Well , that would have been possible if only we did not have the greatest invention of all times – Television. The lady folk spend most of the time worrying about a certain someone who was going to get divorced the third time, whether they would be able to catch the special episode where the lead character’s khoyi-hui-yaddash was going to come back.
And wait, did u think that guys are any better?
No ways. For every ball they missed , they would curse the damn electricity board a thousand times. The rest of the time will be spent in trying to get the updates on the mobile or (in case the person is a miser ) listening to the radio. If there’s no cricket match going, there is football, F1, motogp, tennis, WWE……..
Spam : When the power is restored back, we tweet, poke, chat with extra vigor making up for all the lost time. We tweet about what we did to while away the hours during the power cut ;some of those huge number of followers we have and who have nothing better to do will reply to that tweet adding their woes to it , few others will RT it. Before the next power cut we tweet as much as possible, tweet all the links to some random, useless stuff on the net so much so that the poor tinyurl server is on the verge of breakdown….
So you see power cuts are very bad !