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In the NGO project near Bangalore which I frequently visit, nights spent
without power are not only not a hindrance they are considered almost romantic.
This must be one of the few places on earth where to this day, we use solar lanturns or candle power for
illumination after dark - unless someone with shining teeth who has been using
Colgate whitening toothpaste agrees to sit smiling for us for two to three
hours in the dark in order that we might see each other.
Contrast this with Bombay where we are blessed with so much
more electricity than our fair share and so spoiled, that each sudden power
failure catches us unawares and has us swearing at the government as we go
scrabbling in the dark for candles and torches. But this Saturday evening was
an exception.
The sudden power failure in our area on Saturday
night was one of those rare occasions which actually had me smiling. I had returned home towards half past
eight, from a music session round the corner, to find a loud dhoom dhoom
teenage party in full swing on the building lawn. One of the juvenile brats of
an older grey haired and equally brattish resident of the building was
apparently celebrating his eighteenth, nineteenth or twentieth birthday.
Somebody had said it was his engagement party but that was hard to believe
because like, who would want to marry this noisy, spoiled rotten, lumpy looking
kid who was so good at exercising his lung power and generally throwing his
weight around?
Whoever was not part of the party was compelled into silence
as nobody could make themselves heard above the deafening roar. Glancing down
at the lawn from the balcony I saw a little groups of youngsters in jeans and
mini skirts, dancing self consciously to the yucky music occasionally stopping
in their tracks to answer a mobile phone or tap out an sms before carrying on. So
when relief came in the form of a sudden blackout and the noise unwound to a
jerky stop, my normal inclination to curse and sigh was replaced by a
triumphant, “Oh goody goody goody.”
I spent the next hour alternating between wry, ironic short
stories by Dorothy Parker and Pema Chodron on my Ipad, using the latter to try and balance out the aggressively
triumphant feeling which had surfaced, almost the kind that members of Hindu
fascist groups must feel when something bad happens to their secular and
equally evil opponents.
By the time the lights popped on again it was too late for
the party to continue. Only the yowling of a couple of tomcats was audible. Maybe
the blackout was not such a bad
thing for the young ones too, maybe they discovered the kind of togetherness
that lies beyond noise.
