Bijli

The lights just went out.

There I was tapping away on my laptop as I always do. I'm a compulsive laptoptapper, the tendency has its roots in the summer hols of 1996 when I was 9 years old and spent a month doing nothing but typing on a keyboard that had been separated from a much loved C64. No screen, just keys. Anyway, it's what I've been doing almost non-stop for the last 15 years - I have the luxury of an LCD screen now - and it's what I was doing when the lights went out.

Ah, powercuts. Such a familiar feeling. In high school and college I'd stay up late studying for exams (as you do) and the lights would go out at some post-midnight hour. I'd push my head back against the cushion that was propping me up. I'd close my eyes - or leave them open, it didn't really matter, you saw black either way. Everything was asleep - people, pets, and the pigeons that nested under the air conditioner. It was so quiet. And so dark. You could swear you were the only one awake, if it weren't for the trucks humming on the highway.

The lights would never be out for long. If they weren't back in ten or fifteen minutes, you'd hear the deep, distant sigh of the generator. When I was younger, I'd watch it puff out black smoke clouds. I used to like that polluted smell. It's clean now. You can see it from my bedroom with its little window with the yellow light - and that light miraculously never goes out. Anyway, then the lights would snap back on, sudden and brighter than before. If too many other owls were awake the generator would sigh again - this time precariously. The voltage would dip, the lights would dim and you'd hold your breath. Sometimes they'd go off again and in your pity for the overworked generator you'd reach over and turn something off - the airconditioning, maybe unplug your laptop, or switch off one of the mega-bright energy saving lamps. Then it was more likely to be successful at carrying the weight of electricity. It didn't really matter though, if in those few uncertain moments the lights stayed on or went off. If they came back to life, you'd stretch, moan softly and patter downstairs to brew a cup of tea in a little cauldron. If they didn't, you used the time to breathe. You forget to breathe when you're working hard. Then the 'real' lights would turn back on and you'd patter downstairs to brew a cup of tea in a little cauldron. If it took you less than fifteen minutes to put together that one cup of tea, you did it wrong.