My most trusted companion in my teenage years was a crimson colored 'emergency light', a contraption my parents had bought for me to help me study through power outages. The comradeship between the emergency light and me saw many important education milestones such as my Std X SSC matric and Std XII HSC inter examinations and even a couple of my college years if I am not mistaken. The little gadget not only shone a white fluorescent tubelight on my formative years, but also provided entertainment during power outages via an inbuilt cassette deck and an AM/FM tuner. It managed to survive through Y2K and lived long enough to see the birth of Pune's first private FM radio channel Radio Mirchi. It had come with a free Daler Mehendi cassette (with 21 minutes of playtime and exactly four songs), which was the only cassette it could play without getting stuck. Uncannily, the cassette and its player breathed their last around the same time.
The point behind recounting this story is that power outages were an elemental feature of growing up for many of us. Not so much normalis situ in America. As such, the resultant practice of stocking up on candles or investing in a battery powered lamp or an inverter/UPS is an alien concept here. Luckily, with all our prior experience with power outages, we did not bat an eye when we lost power for 11 hours yesterday due to heavy winds and fallen trees. What with it being Deepavali, we already had little diyas all over the kitchen and living room! All we had to do was to bring out a couple of candles from the shelf and we were all set for a pleasant evening. There was no hum from the refrigerator, the dishwasher. The TV-Chromecast-iPad apparatus took a sabbatical. There was no heat but we made up for that by huddling together and bundling ourselves in sweaters and blankets. For the first time in many months the four of us plus my in-laws all sat the same room at the same time and had conversations without distractions! We ate chaat, played antakshari, and recounted old stories. A much needed power outage, this!
Beautiful!!
ReplyDeleteGrowing up only we had one emergency light for all 6 of us and it was “owned” by my Ajja. If we needed to study or complete homework, we had to sit around (not too close because it apparently blocked the light) where we could somehow manage to read our book and complete assignment. But after few years we upgraded and appa made sure our studies were not interrupted and got another emergency light and eventually a tube light. We felt so happy to have that. Our kids are previledged to be in a country where power cuts are rare!
ReplyDeleteWow - really nice recollection of those times man.
ReplyDeleteThese lamps were great unifiers - be it for study, dinner or a simple sit-together.
Until I read this post- I'd totally forgotten about a similar lamp we had.
Somehow I find the design of these timely partners really cute.
I feel like visiting that lamp again now - but I have no idea if it still exists in our home.
I wonder how many such iconic things from our growing up time I've forgotten about.
So, keep writing about the times gone by.