Life without constant electricity!! You shudder at the mere thought. Yet this is a given in rural Bihar. Power corrupts; and uninterrupted power corrupts uninterruptedly!!! Therefore, to keep the simple rural folks of Bihar uncorrupted, electricity plays the game of hide and seek. It always hides and you always seek. And this in the hottest April in a decade! The heat is sweltering, the sun mercilessly scorching, the dust laden westerly winds agonisingly searing, the barren lands parched – and no electricity for hours on end. A state of total and complete powerlessness (pun intended).
Bihar is making rapid progress. The annual growth rate achieved in the last fiscal is an impressive 11%, next only to Gujrat. NDTV has crowned the Hon’ble CM as the Entrepreneur of the Year, New York Times has published a gushing story on the progress of Bihar. And yet we remain powerless. The state blames the centre and the centre blames the state. Merry go round!!! It is easy to become cynical, but cynicism is not going to bring electricity; so you learn to enjoy, to cope and to hope!!
You discover the subtle but supreme advantages of rural life. Chilled water baths during the sweltering summers. Natural, non-polluting, free of cost – available only in rural India!!! Confused?? Nature is the answer. A bath with water straight out of a subterranean source – wells, tube wells, whatever – is the most chilled out experience. And it happens only in (rural) India. Water is not rationed either. No nightmares of getting up at 02:30 AM to fill the buckets. Chilled water available round the clock. Aaah, the luxury of having your own source of water and the chilled out baths!! Damn electricity, enjoy nature’s bounty.
A blissful sleep without even a fan at night! Hallucinating?? No, reality!!! The open terrace is the answer. No polluting smog, no prying eyes, no lurking voyeurs – again natural, non-polluting, free of cost and available only in rural India. The utterly polluted urban air obfuscates the stars. Here, the sky is splattered with them. You have never seen so many of them. Watch the stars, bask in the milky moonlight, hum a song and gently go off to sleep. By early morning you require a thick sheet to wrap yourself in!!! Who wants to sleep closeted in a small room when such pristine luxuries are available? Enjoy!!
Brew a pot of tea; sip it slowly in the privacy of your open courtyard. Enjoy the cool breeze. Forget tweets; listen to the twitter of birds. Forget the newspapers with sickening stories; listen to the mooing of the cows. Tea becomes doubly refreshing. No fans needed, no electricity required!!! Sheer bliss. Enjoy!!!
Invest in a few gadgets to cope. Inverters are handy. And pollution neutral too. CFL bulbs and low wattage fans help. But for how long? The generator then comes in handy. A sturdy beast that churns out a healthy 7.5 KV it charges the inverter batteries apart from providing electricity. Pollution be damned now. But diesel costs a packet. Fall back on Indian ingenuity. Kerosene is a great substitute!! Where to get kerosene from? Trust the robust economic sense of rural Indians. Cost reduced by half, therefore, double the running time!! The worst periods successfully negotiated. You cope!!
The great pastime of predicting a normal monsoon has begun. IMD has dutifully predicted a normal monsoon. Forget that a normal monsoon was predicted last year too, when we had the worst drought in 37 years. They are there to create hope and to keep the sensex gyrating. All and sundry join this great game – the show will go on for a few months to packed houses!! Create hope, don’t let despondency set in. Hope for the best and forget the rest!!! You start hoping too, lest they call you hopeless. Hope for a normal monsoon. Hope for the moisture laden easterly winds. Hope for rains in May. Hope for power supply to be resumed. Hope for uninterrupted power supply. Keep hoping – it is free of cost.
Enjoy, cope and hope – life is a breeze.
2 comments:
HOPE, HOPE, HOPE. What is even better is that it can be packaged and sold at a price which is essentially its profit too, as you have rightly pointed out - it is free of cost. Selling hope is easily done since every one is so eager to buy it. Entrepreneurs sell it with abandon to all whom they encounter. Their suppliers -who buy the hope for a better profit next time , their customers - who buy the hope for a better value next time and their employees - who buy the hope for a better reward next time. This is one arena where what private enterprise does , the government does even better - they sell wholesale to every citizen the constant hope for a better tomorrow. So be happy Buy HOPE all the time - it does not cost and yet you pay !!!
You bet, my friend. Successive govts have fine tuned and now selling hope has attained an art form. You pay even though it is free!!
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