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Published
in Gulf News, May 23, 2006
There's electricity
in the air
In
the
Silicon Valley of India, as soon as there is the hint of a rainstorm,
they turn off the power.
I'm
so used to this that I automatically turn off the television when
I hear thunder - even if I'm in a country where power cuts make
front-page news. In Bangalore, the power goes off so much, newspapers
would need a whole supplement. Sometimes it goes on and off so randomly,
it seems there's a crazed monkey on the loose in the main control
room of BESCOM - the Bangalore Electricity Supply Company.
My
father is acquainted with everybody in BESCOM, from the local linesman
to the chairman. He has all their numbers and the second the power
goes, he starts phoning his way up the food chain until either the
lights come back, or he's been given the time it will return.
He
has even, when suffering summertime power cuts at 2am, called the
chairman and said, "I'd like you to know that I can't sleep
because there's no power. So I don't think you should be sleeping
either."
While
the rest of world looks at us as a Silicon Valley and the pirate
hub of the BPO industry, they should know that we rarely go a day
without a power cut. Every IT park has a power generation system
the size of a small city on its periphery. Smaller companies have
banks of batteries along entire walls to make sure the outsourcing
continues even if the electricity supply doesn't.
There
was a time when most days of the week we'd have more outages than
actual power. Sometimes, living in Whitefield, an aged transformer
would explode and there'd be no lights and fans downstream of it
for two days until it was fixed. This is why BESCOM turns the current
off at the first sign of thunder. All those power lines running
among the trees are likely to be shorted out by windswept branches.
Using
a computer in those pre-battery-backup days was when I learned the
value of hitting Ctrl-S at every pause in my work - a habit I still
carry. And even today, I feel anxious when watching a television
programme I love; a hangover from those days of having a blackout
during a show I'd waited a week to watch.
In
the evenings, power cuts were social times when my parents would
have to leave the television, and my brother and I would no longer
be able to have music blaring in our rooms. We'd light a candle
and sit around chatting and playing with the dogs.
Of
course, after just 10 minutes of this, my father would get impatient
and start making calls to the various electricity board officials
he knew - gradually calling higher and higher until he pulled the
chairman away from his dinner. It's now at a point that when the
power goes, somebody from BESCOM calls him and tells him what is
wrong.
I'm
reminded of those early days again as Bangalore is hit by a series
of unseasonable, unusually violent electric storms every evening.
The power cuts are frequent enough to discharge our battery back-up
systems and so we're back to sitting in candlelight and chatting
about life.
It's
quite funny that as we do so, enough electricity to keep us in excess
supply for months flies untapped above our heads. Perhaps the Silicon
Valley of India should redeem itself by finding a way of harnessing
all that lightning. Alternatively, hooking my father up to a turbine
during one of his shouting sprees would generate enough energy to
light half the city for a week.
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