Cut it for memories

Second most fickle thing to politicians in India, is electricity or at least sometimes back it used to be. Sitting alone at my desk one day when electricity went off, I wandered into some very funny and delightful memories. I remembered the time when I was in school, when homework was the biggest worry. Well more worrisome was realizing it late in evening and worse than that was the fact that lights went off as soon as I sat down to complete. But somehow that no-light thing also brought an excitement with it, of spending some more time with friends in the neighbourhood, chatting, gossiping and playing dumb charades. Even adults were not spared. I remember how ghost stories sprang up instantly and aunties revised all the gossips they had completed discussing that day.

The course followed when I went to college. Standing in those galleries of Cautley, we had Inter-branch gossip. It would be a letdown if I say that we had to complete assignments when the electricity cut off, which anyhow remained incomplete till the very last minute. But then the fun was in throwing a light beam at someone’s face or room, to hurl abuses with changed voices and to go to hostel top for a bakar in changed ambience. I think whole of my lobby mates would remember that night during the end sem exam of Solid Mechanics when we had no electricity for the whole of night, for whole of that time when 80% of college prepare for exam. From my branch the guy at the receiving end was DJ. He received a back due to that one fateful night, as the rumour goes.

Well may be down the years, we would have no electricity cuts. I somehow feel bad about it. I feel sad about my juniors who would never experience this part of college fun. I feel for the kids in my locality who have no escape from that evening work anyhow. I feel for the nostalgia associated with such acts as trivial as electricity cut off, which our future generations will never experience. All this I thought in 5 min, because that’s what it took for electricity to resume, thanks to generator in my locality. I resumed my work.