Feature
Preparing to be doomed…
Newsflash: “Certain areas of the country may suffer from load-shedding and shortage in gas supply for the next 48 hrs”. Munching on my Chocó snacks with one hand stretched out at the TV with the remote in it, I gasped! Quickly scrolling through the list of those “certain” areas which would be doomed for next few days, I started cursing myself for not living in the “privileged” areas of the country where no problems get to set their pangs on while the rest of the country plunges deep into innumerable sufferings!! There, there, I was only starting to enjoy the few days of new classes, before the vicious study-load dug its venomous teeth deep into our souls, sucking out the comforts we all crave for throughout our student life! And, there it came, the turmoil, as I would call it, ruining every possibility of my comfy couch-potato life!
Frankly speaking, “Load-Shedding” is the term I fear as the coastal people fears “Tornado”. Seriously, admit it or not, electricity is indispensable in our lives. An hour without electricity disrupts our daily life, makes it come to a stand still (well unless you have a generator, of course). I feel totally helpless during load shedding. The load shedding affects us all. Apart from the serious problems, let us focus on the problems we-the student community face. The nerdy geeks starts gritting their teeth since they cant produce a spectacular piece of assignment without internet resources; the hunky metal dudes are ready to bang their heads with any metal (literally) , since they cant re-charge their I-pod or download a new thrash-metal song that was just released; the net-freaks condemn the authorities ,wondering how many important spam e-mails are eating up their mail-boxes, how many friend-requests are awaiting for them in their face book accounts, or how they needed to do the convo-chats ; while the TV maniacs go tearing their hair with anxiety thinking who will kill whom today, with whose husband did whose wife elope, how many drum-rolls of thrilling incidents in the drama-serials did they miss; also the love-birds start grieving and lamenting , not being able to say “I love u” to their worst halves for the thousandth time maybe, as their cell-phones beeps the eternal beep and shuts off without charge.
As for me, I am lucky enough not to undergo any of these life-threatening situations my peers face as stated above. But I do suffer as well. If there were no threat of load shedding, I wouldn't have been writing this piece at all, instead I would have been roaming around, grazing as I call it, doing nothing!! I might have also been making plans on what to sneak from my dad's wallet to buy gifts for my dad himself on his birthday (btw, Happy Birthday abbu!). But now that I need to submit a piece before my editor boxes my ears, with the posed threats of load-shedding for 48 hrs, here I am, boxing my brains and squeezing this write-up out of it, little by little.
Without electricity, it apparently feels like we are isolated in a lonesome island, with no connection with outer world- as our main source of communication at present are e-mail, msn and cell-phones. Seriously, what are we into? Even to say “hello” to a friend, we need electricity, pc, net-connection, msn/face book/e-mail account and whatnot. The land-phones are never used as much they are during these times, with us all being cut-off from the techno gadgets, we finally get handful time to waste on the cord-ful phones! Also some of us become nature lovers all at once, maybe sitting at the rooftops, marveling on how beautiful the moon actually is, maybe even enthusiastic enough to write a poem. Talk about free times, this is the time when you are finally cut-off from your hectic schedules, although forcefully. It's at these moments that we actually realize, no matter how much we complain about our same old technical busy life, we actually feel kind of crippled without so. Strange, isn't it?
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