Load-shedding Days

It was a scary evening. Dark clouds had gathered from nowhere, lights flashed in the sky, and the clouds roared. My little sister, Arpana, clung on to me. I tried to be brave, but deep down, I was scared. Our parents had not been home yet, and Grandpa was dozing off on the sofa. How could he sleep? Then I realized that Papa had taken his hearing aid for repairs. When the lightning struck again and the clouds rolled in anger, we jumped to him.

He woke up, startled. ‘What happened?’

The sky lit up again, and we buried our faces into his arms. ‘Don’t worry, kids,’ he said in his usual calm voice. ‘The sky is taking photos.’

‘So, how do we look in it?’ Arpana asked.

‘No, it’s not taking photos, Arpana,’ I brought her to reality. ‘Grandpa, please don’t make up such stories. I know what is happening. Clouds are striking with each other and the friction is producing electricity.’

‘Who taught you that?’

‘Our science teacher.’

‘Oh, great. They are teaching you facts from an early age. But that means you could not enjoy the story of the sky taking photos. What’s life without stories?’

Grandpa and I always had these arguments. He was not happy that at ten; I was always seeking facts and did not enjoy fiction.

The lightning struck again. And at that very moment, everything went dark. We held on to Grandpa. ‘What’s happening?’ Arpana said.

‘Lights went out,’ Grandpa said. He felt for his phone he had kept on the table in front of the sofa and turned on the flash. The room did not glow, but it was enough for us to feel safer.

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘The lightning must have hit a power station.’

‘Will it be back?’ Arpana said. She was almost crying. ‘When will it be back?’

‘It won’t take long,’ Grandpa assured. ‘You had never experienced this, hadn’t you?’

We nodded. He continued, ‘When I was a little older than you, Bishal, I experienced this daily. At its peak, lights went up to twenty hours a day.’

I had never thought, not even in my dreams, that lights could go off, plunging everything into darkness. I could not imagine life without electricity. And Grandpa was saying that when he was young, he had to live without electricity? I thought he was making up a story and told him so.

‘It’s not a story,’ he said as calm as ever. ‘It’s hiss-tory. Don’t they teach about it in your school?’

‘No, they don’t.’

‘Then listen to me.’

Grandpa closed his eyes for a while. Arpana and I looked into his calm face with curiosity as he went down his memory lane and narrated his story.

‘It began almost fifty years ago, in 2006, after the civil war. They said the electricity crisis occurred in the late 90s, but I was too young to know. As far as I know, during the peak of the civil war between 2001 and 2005, there was no problem, at least in Kathmandu. Blackout or turning off lights was a means of protest against the king’s authority in April 2006.

‘But that winter, Nepal Electricity Authority invoked Load-shedding. They said, “There is no enough load at the power stations. The civil war disrupted major hydropower projects. Because of the low run-off in the dry season and problems in reservoirs, what we produce is far too low than the demands. Load-shedding is inevitable.” And we complied.

‘After that, Load-shedding’s notoriety increased. It got unpredictable. It went away for a while, only to come back with more power. Load-shedding’s power reached such devilish heights that it entered the entire city at a time, scared people and made sure that they accepted it as fate. People in the Authority waited for its return so they could help businessmen sell generators and inverters to get some commission in return. Some per cent of the commission went to the leaders. For children who did not want to study, Load-shedding was an excellent pretence not to do their homework. Candlelight dinners were normal. And for some young people, it was a time to kindle their love.’

‘But not everyone enjoyed Load-shedding, did they?’ I asked.

‘As I said, we had accepted Load-shedding as our fate. We had lived with it. But Load-shedding’s unpredictability meant that it came when people were watching their favourite movies and shows, when they were chatting with friends on the internet or when they were doing important office work. Sometimes, their rice would be raw, sometimes they got stuck in elevators and sometimes in dark alleys and toilets. Life was havoc. But people did not protest. When you accept something as your fate, you might complain, but you can never protest.

‘But writers and actors wrote and performed against Load-shedding. Scientists, engineers, industrialists and entrepreneurs produced journals, conducted seminars and suggested different ways to bring an end to Load-shedding, but the leaders did nothing. These leaders had ended an authoritarian regime. Calling for protests would solve nothing, they thought. So, quietly, they formed a Task Group to look for Electricity, the only God that could end the Devil.

‘At first, they went to Kulekhani, the hydropower station with the largest reservoir at that time. They found Electricity, but It was too weak to fight Load-shedding. They went to other large stations like Kaligandaki and Trishuli and saw that Load-shedding had overpowered Electricity in those stations, too. The Task Group was dejected. They had almost quit when they found that in a micro-hydropower station, Electricity was more powerful than in a large project. Curious, they reached there in no time.

‘Electricity had killed Load-shedding in ten villages with over one-thousand families around the project. The people were happy. Children had improved their ranks, small-scale industries were running. Tourism had improved as cultural activities like Rodi had thrived.

‘The Task Group invoked Electricity, “O God! Please listen to us. You are our saviour. You are our only hope. Lord, it had been a very long time since we had witnessed your full potential. What shall we do to see you like this everywhere?”

‘They were awe-struck when Electricity took a human form and said, “I feel sad that you had to go through a lot to see my true powers. But they have severed my powers. I might be powerful in this area, but if I can’t join with all the grids in full power, I won’t be able to completely defeat Load-shedding.”’

Arpana looked worried. ‘Won’t Electricity defeat Load-shedding?’

‘Of course, It will,’ I gave her hope.

Grandpa nodded and continued, ‘The Task Group could not take Electricity to the national grid from there, but they learned a lesson. Electricity said, “You have to do something so I can join national grids from minor projects like these. You should also start working on developing large projects. But the most important thing you should do is to catch the corrupt people from the NEA, punish and banish them. If you can do these, I will be able to defeat Load-shedding.”’

‘Did they do as Electricity said?’ Arpana sounded more hopeful.

Grandpa was about to say something when the phone rang. He picked the phone, put it on loudspeaker in full volume. Mom spoke on the other side, ‘We were in the subway. The lights went out. The network was dead here. Are you fine, Baba? Arpana and Bishal, are they alright?’

‘They are fine, Divya. You need not worry. Kids, say something.’

‘We are fine, Mom. We are listening to Grandpa’s story,’ I said.

‘Oh, are you? That’s good.’

‘Come home soon,’ Arpana said.

‘Okay, my child. We will be there in no time.’

As soon as he put the phone down, Grandpa continued his story, ‘The days of darkness, fear and suffocation did not seem to end. We were powerless, but we did not dare to seek power. Those who had power were exploiting us. We were investing in diesel generators and inverters. The country’s economy suffered a tremendous loss as industries collapsed. We were looking for a ray of hope during that era of darkness.

‘And then we saw it. In the Tihar[1] of 2016, we witnessed a miracle. Everyone in Kathmandu was expecting lights to go out as the demand would be very high. But we lit up every room, every house, every alley, every city. No darkness. Goddess Laxmi had finally returned and was blessing us with wealth for the first time in many years.’

‘How did it happen?’ Arpana asked.

‘Yeah, it sounds like a miracle,’ I was curious. ‘How did it happen if you were accustomed to twenty hours of Load-shedding and Electricity Authority was regularly imposing it?’

Grandpa looked happy, but he said, ‘I am disappointed. I thought you would say, “Someone must have made it possible.”’

So, someone followed Electricity’s advice? I did not ask. I wanted to know what Grandpa had to say.

‘We knew something changed that Monsoon,’ he said. ‘But we did not know we would see effects within a couple of months. We had a hard time believing that the head of the Electricity Authority, Kulman Ghising, had shown us that miracle was possible if we did our work sincerely.’

‘Cool Man?’ I interrupted with a fake accent. Grandpa laughed. ‘He was cool. We saw a brilliant radiance in Kulman. He had accomplished the extra-ordinary.

‘But every time the journalists asked him how he achieved the feat, he would say, “I did what I had to do. I could manage with what we had. I wished that Goddess Laxmi came to everyone’s home that Tihar and with her blessing, I could make use of all the major stations. I could bring Electricity to full potential and defeat Load-shedding.” To him, it was ordinary, but to us, a miracle. We were gutted because the heads before him had not done what they had to do, tricked us and habituated us into living with Load-shedding. And we did not even question them.

‘One member of the Task Group once asked him, “When we asked Electricity from a micro-hydropower to come run everywhere, It said Load-shedding was too powerful. How did you do this?”

‘Nothing you don’t know,’ was his reply.

‘But is this long-lasting?’ she asked.

‘Why not?’

‘How do I believe you?’

‘He then briefed his plans for about ten minutes. In the end, she said, “I believe you, but the system still has problems.”

‘He looked confused. She said, “Have the corrupt heads of Electricity Authority been punished. Have the Load-shedding worshippers been caught? Do we have a guarantee that after you go away, Load-shedding won’t come back?”

‘Even Kulman had no answer to that. But in the next four years, he changed the fate of the nation. More jobs opened, more people knew about the Load-shedding worshippers through the internet, and more people had voices that could challenge the decisions of the government.’

‘Load-shedding didn’t come back, did it?’ I asked.

‘It came sometimes, even when he was in the office. But not that powerful. As more hydropower projects completed, Electricity gained more power. They could not fool us into Load-shedding. Lights went out more frequently in days like this, but with the change in technology, even this has become rare.’

‘Lights are back,’ Arpana cheered as the room brightened with electricity. I felt blessed that we had this brightness. A power outage of ten minutes had worried me. How would I survive for twenty hours? But Grandpa’s generation had.

I was still swimming in my thoughts when the HomeManager notified us that Mom and Papa had arrived. Arpana and I rushed to meet them. ‘Grandpa told us a story today,’ Arpana jumped with joy.

‘How was it?’ Mom asked as we led them to the living room.

‘Fantastic. But I could not believe all of it. I must look for the facts.’

Papa looked at me in disbelief, ‘I don’t remember the last time you liked Grandpa’s story. Must have been a long time ago. What story did you tell, Baba?’

‘Oh, it was about Load-shedding days. You have heard it, haven’t you?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Tell them on my behalf, kids. They know the story, but they want to hear it again because they like my version.’

We began retelling the story to our parents. They asked questions in between as if they had never heard it. Grandpa looked at the four of us for some time, smiled and dozed off again.

[1] One of the largest festivals of Nepal