Wake up to the sound of a mobile phone alarm. Turn on the coffee maker and read news on your tab as the morning cuppa brews. Blend spices in the mixer, steam rice in the electric cooker, thaw meat in the microwave, and take veggies — neatly wrapped in bags from the supermarket or online grocery store — from the refrigerator, chop them in the food processor and cook them for lunch on the induction stove. Bathe in hot water from the geyser. Slather jam on browned slices of bread from the toaster for breakfast, as the news channel blares out the headlines.
Even if you don’t use all these gadgets on any given day, certainly most of the household work relies on electricity. Last week, with no power in most parts of the city, residents who were housebound had to go back to the basics. We’re talking mortar and pestle ( ammi kallu ), filter coffee percolators, listening to the radio for news on the rains, and a scramble for daily bread and biscuits at the little corner store.
Residents got their daily quota of exercise by using the hand pump for water and then resorted to boiling and filtering instead of relying on the RO apparatus. With sumps or overhead tanks running dry, bucket baths were the order of the day, with water heated on the stove. Refrigerators proved useless — so food was freshly prepared for every meal, milk was boiled by the hour and the batch that had become sour was heated and sweetened with sugar.
Candles, bought merely for their decorative purpose, were quickly lit, as LED and other emergency lamps ran out of charge. It was only a little while before people would have resorted to using potatoes to charge their phones. With mosquitoes posing a big menace, electric repellents were disposed of and instead coils were brought back. Families were forced to interact with each other as there was no TV to stare at during meal times. Uno and rummy card games replaced Candy Crush; Draw Something went offline as teams were formed to play Pictionary by candle-light.
It doesn’t stop there. Old newspapers were repurposed into packaging material for food to be distributed, glass jars into water containers, gunny sacks and coir mats replaced floor mats and paais (dry grass mats) replaced mattresses. In all, it was a throwback to the good old days.
