We first began energy efficiency at home by replacing incandescent bulbs with fluorescent lamps, or ‘tube lights’. The tubes lit up one or two of the largest rooms while the humble bulbs lit up the other rooms. And like most perspiring middle-class families we too practised wattage discrimination: the smaller the enclosure, the lower would be the wattage. So the zero-watt variety was always reserved for what is now acknowledged in India to be the most important domestic enclosure: the loo. Rufescent zero-watts can also be seen at the doors of many a regional cinema hall, declaring that a crucial ‘operation’ is on inside. And those torture scenes in movies? Can anyone imagine a torture scene without that glaring bulb diabolically lighting up the tortured (and the torturers) from under a coolie lampshade (a conical one, like the straw hat of a Vietnamese farmer)? But, come 2016, all this looks set to change in Karnataka, and perhaps in the other States as well.
What sane person wouldn’t want to invest in ways to save energy? But it won’t be easy for me to let go of the incandescents: not only for their simplicity of design and operation but their fragility that carries uncommon ruggedness – a thin glass bulb that safely contains a filament that can attain temperatures of nearly 3000 C! The incandescent retains more or less the same design that was used at its invention some 135 years ago. This has made its silhouette a popular comic trope that silently announces the flash of a good idea. And who from my generation can forget the iconic caricature of Khushwant Singh ensconced in a light bulb for his column? Meanwhile, the argument about the number of scientists needed to replace a light bulb rages on.
The incandescents rarely disappointed. When they went out, well, they went out. Not so with the tubes: expert consultation was required. No matter how old, the bulbs always died young: bright one moment, dead the next. Things were different with the tube. First, they would begin scarring the wall with vertical soot tails. Then they would begin droning and, approaching terminal stages, they would develop ‘dark circles’. And then they would die an agonisingly slow death by flickering endlessly. Who’d miss something that seldom went out without a fuss? (But sometimes a simple organ replacement would extend its life.)
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The incandescents also responded quickly to our needs, especially when it was time to catch a mischievous rat. Try catching those pests by suddenly switching on a tube. (Suddenly, but stealthily, turn on the bulb to spot those rascals, was one of those few contributions my grandpa made to his beleaguered legacy.)
Then came an effort to popularise the compact fluorescent lamp (CFL), which we were told would save lots of energy. After they started their fade-out, now it is time for another energy-saving device, the LED lamp. (Yes, it is a lamp, not a bulb.) The electricity supply companies in Karnataka will soon mandate their domestic use, replacing electric bulbs with the electronic, light emitting diode lamps; electronic devices generally consume far less power than their electrical counterparts.
The brightness, we are told, will not be compromised. Do our eyes have the same visual reception of a lux meter (which is a device used to measure the intensity of light), I wonder. The newspaper reports were reassuring, with enough statistics and sundry details of how such a change can help save the State several megawatts. Well, who knows? If successful, the replacement can be the one bright spot in our path of lumbering progress. And how long before they are replaced by solar bulbs and lunar lamps?
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Few will argue that the invention and incorporation of Thomas Alva Edison’s model of the electric bulb into everyday living was a landmark of western scientific and technological progress that is now almost universally used. Now these little suns that have not only brightened up our homes and workplaces but also imparted a sense of warmth, seem set to go. The people of Karnataka will soon be compelled to banish from their homes what the late essayist T.G. Vaidyanathan called the ‘warmth of the human light’ for the chill hue of a cold storage or the gloominess of an operation theatre.
But I intend to remain the romantic: the replacement, I hope, will only be as transitional as an eclipse, not the setting of those cheerful little suns.
mjx143@gmail.com