Upon pondering a bit and wallowing in darkness, a realization hit my mind the moment I bumped my foot on the bedside table on my way to the bathroom. “Ah! I have become careless!” This thought of carelessness took me some 50 years back while I was spending my vacation with my mother in my mamaghar, maternal home in Assam during the late sixties.
As there was no electricity in those days, we were careful and knew exactly where things were even in the dark—I don’t remember ever stumbling into anything during those dark times. Life was simple during those days in the village and preparation for the night would start at sundown.
At sundown we the children (there were about three of us) were responsible for cleaning the glass of oil lamps, filling it up with oil and get it ready for the night. There were no candles. Of course the tuki, the kerosene oil lamp, was there but it gave off a lot of smoke. It was used only in the kitchen usually kept right above the chulo, cooking hearth.
Its pale yellow illumination did not do much to bringing light, rather it spread a lot of sooty smoke. Anyway, that’s what was used to illuminate the kitchen for the nighttime cooking. As the cooking was done we, the children, sat around aghena, the fireplace, and chatted and listened to stories.
It was usually our grandmother to tell us the wonderful tales of how she got married at the early age of four. These were fascinating stories regardless of whether they were real or imaginative though many of them were based on real events. What mattered most for us were the conversations we had with our grandparents. Sharing their experience with us was their way of imparting information that would remain with us as a fond memory for the rest of our lives.
I still remember my grandmother’s description of a procession of the young sati (hardly ten years of age) on her way to being burned with her dead husband. According to my grandmother, the young sati looked like a bride but fully drenched in oil to facilitate easy burning. She used to cry describing the scene and we would cry with her just imagining the pain of the young sati. I wonder we would ever have sat around her and listened to her stories, if we had electricity in those days. Because there was no electricity we had an opportunity to listen to her rich experiences.
One such experience was her telling us about how she saved the life of a politician by hiding him within the folds of her gunyu, sari. We all had a good laugh at the time but she scolded us saying it was such a scary scenario with the British police searching for him, to have him killed.
Eventually she too laughed saying whatever was supposed to happen, happened and that was that. The other incident that she fondly repeated concerned the burning of the western clothing in a bonfire. My grandfather was greatly influenced by Gandhian lifestyle and was averse to western dress. He adopted dhoti as his for the rest of his life henceforth.
These were amazing times that gave us a wealth of information, which is nowhere to be found today. We would wait anxiously each day, until the sundown so that we could sit with our grandparents and listen to their rich experiences. My grandfather had his own special stories to tell us. He told us of times when huge snake had come to drink milk right from the cow’s nipple and we would be amazed at that prospect.
All the children would cry out, “no, no that’s not right”, and he would say, ‘I saw it, so no question of lying to you, believe me’ and we would look at each other in the dim light shaking our heads in disbelief but keeping quiet hoping for more of such stuffs to follow. He would talk about his jail experiences, his experiences during floods in the Kajiranga Buffalo Reserve where he shared a machan with a huge snake, and we would just stick together in fear.
After recovering from fear we would yell back, “Tell us more! Tell us more!!” Sometimes he would tell us about his experience during his fight for independence in India. To us these times spent around the aghena were quality times. Darkness had its own charm for us. If you see from this perspective, not all is wrong about load-shedding hours.
Darkness can be a blessing in disguise so far as family time is concerned. Usually the maximum load shedding occurs after daylight, and that means no primetime television. You might even pickup that book you started to read some time ago! May be you will realize the phone call you were supposed to make to your mother. Who knows, you might even find the energy to visit her for a quiet dinner. Imagine the love and appreciation it brings as reward. Thanks to load shedding, you finally found the time to think about that. You finally sorted that bookshelf of yours that you always wanted to fix. It’s Saturday and there is load shedding and your computer backup just gave up, so what next?
This is the opportunity to spend some time playing monopoly with your kids or even lego! Come to think of it, spending quality time with your children will be something they will remember for a long, long time. One should be thankful to Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) for being so considerate at providing for such precious time. Load shedding is not that bad, it has some good advantages. We only have to see it in the positive light.
So next time you have load shedding, think of something creative to do with your family. May be a short trip around town. Give it a try and brighten up the lives of your friends and family. After all every cloud has some silver lining.
usha@pokharel.net
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