5 Days of power cut…

Life is wonderful with all of the amenities we have in our daily lives, and we tend to take them for granted because we don’t realize the significance of these small, insignificant things that provide us with comfort. And to make me realize the significance of these things, an incident occurred in my life that I will never forget. Let us begin with the incident.
It was the summer season. My married cousins came with their children for the summer vacation. It is usually a fun day to spend, and we used to do all the fun activities, but my house’s electricity went out one day around 1 PM. We began to emerge from our rooms because it was becoming too hot inside. My house has inverters, but they are only used for fans, and because we are addicted to air conditioners, being inside the room for an extended time was becoming unbearable for all of us.
We settled into the verandah and began playing Ludo and cards, while my nephews and niece painted on the blank sheet. We spent the entire day like this. But when the electricity did not come on at night, we all started to freak out because it was becoming unbearable to spend the night without electricity. But we also used this as an opportunity to have fun because it was the first time in a long time that there was no electricity at night. My elder cousins began telling me scary ghost stories while the children were sleeping, but I still had a good time that night. But when we awoke, my father delivered the most dreaded news: there will be a power outage for the next four days because the transformer in our area burned down, and we will only have power for one and a half hours per day. We were all so worried because we were all so reliant on electricity that we thought we wouldn’t be able to survive these events. However, we have no control over the situation. We all started doing our daily chores, but the problem arises when I pick up my phone to use it and see that there is only 15% battery left, and I freaked out because living without the phone seems next to unthinkable for me, and I started screaming because I was not getting any way to charge my phone, and my father was the most worried person in my family because he was unable to do his business because it required phones and desktops.
But then we lazed around the whole day and then around 7 p.m. the electricity came on, we all ran to our room to charge our electronic devices and switched on the air conditioners and took a nap, but then the electricity went off, which we were all saddened about, but then we got up for room switching off the fans as my mother needed lights in the kitchen to make dinner and my father was saying to switch off the fans as we needed lights for the emergency. And it was at that point that I realized the importance of electricity. And then, at night, we, the family members, came out and began talking about what was going on in our lives; I must say, it was one of the best things that happened that day, as we now often forget to talk with our loved ones because we are engrossed in our phones or laptops. As a result, we spent two days talking and playing, and my father also joined in on the fun. But on the third day, it was the day of my college interview, and I was getting nervous because my laptop had very little charge and it was critical for me to attend the interview.
But because I didn’t have a choice, I decided to go for it and relax with the situation, and my interview went quickly. We spent 5 days like this, and by the fifth day, we were all exhausted from not getting enough sleep due to the heat. But when the power went out on the fifth day, we were all disappointed. We were all relieved when the power came back on the sixth day. We felt like “this is Jannat” when we turned on the fans without hesitation.
We all feel like we accomplished something great by surviving five days without electricity. and during those days, I learned the value of many things that we often overlook in our daily lives, such as spending time with my family without the distraction of mobile phones, and, most importantly, the value of electricity. And yet thinking about those days now makes me happy because we had a great time despite the difficulties we faced.

By Poonam Bagaria