Load shedding, the once dreaded and now a forgotten word.
Some of you might be wondering about what nostalgia can be associated with power outages but for me it has a different meaning. Having spent my childhood in cantonment areas, mostly outside West Bengal I never had to endure the pain that comes with regular blackout of power and so was saved from the cons of scheduled load shedding.
It was only during the summer vacations when I used to come to my grandmother’s place that I came to appreciate the beauty of load shedding.
Every evening at 8 there were power cuts for an hour and it seemed back then that life came to a standstill. There are memories which are characterised by distinctive smells, I remember those days by the pungent smell of kerosene oil, for as soon as the power cut used to take place, kerosene lamps came alive, people stopped whatever they were doing. Some complained while some enjoyed the silence it brings with itself. For me though, it meant another excuse to delay my holiday homework but apart from me there was another soul who used to come alive, my grandmother or Dida as we Bengalis are more accustomed to say. It used to be, perhaps the best time of the day for her, for her grandchildren used to clung to her for one more story .
Years passed and we gradually moved on, from ghost stories to Gopal-bhar to stories of the Soviet union and finally to Bangladesh. We used to have these magical conversations in the dark in which she used to describe her everyday life at Bangladesh before the partition. I have never been to Bangladesh but I have these vivid images in my mind formed from those stories, of houses built over considerable span each having its own pond, the fishermen, the school she went to ,the mighty river Padma in which she and her siblings used to swim, the trees ,the fishes ,the greenery and of the day when they finally had to leave all those behind in search of a new home.
I don’t see many people these days appreciate the forgotten beauty of the darkness but back then when that faint light of the moon used to illuminate a portion of the bed while I lay beside Dida, listening to her I used to drift into a different world all together. Even the nocturnal sky had a different aura in the darkness which was not adulterated by the city lights and I used to enjoy gazing at that pure sky. The darkness kept the light in the family bonding, for it meant reminiscing about the old times.
Though the power cuts were regular and scheduled but each day we were brought back to reality at 9 by the sudden glow of light, the fans cursed, the lights burned and it seemed like an old rusted machine is back on its track.
As I grew up, the load sheddings started becoming less and less frequent. Continuous supply of power was maintained, more so with the advent of inverters. And though we stayed at the same house surrounded by the same people, such conversations never happened. I came to relive those moments of darkness after a long time at the university. We never had regular outages of power but every semester before one of the majors, there were power cuts for 10-15 minutes but what was silence before was now total uproar as the hostel guys screamed. Some became more anxious and for some it meant another excuse to relax.
With improvement in science and technology we have gained a lot but what we have lost will forever remain etched in our memories. Some memories are repugnant but there are memories which are warm and pleasant and worth holding on to.