Lights out

The weather bureau and the National Grid, the agency that supplies energy to my part of the Island, have been issuing warnings over the past several weeks: a big hurricane (defined as a tropical cyclone with winds in excess of 119 kmph) is headed our way. People by the coast have been evacuated. I am relieved to find that my part of town isn’t in the flood-zone. My friends live on higher ground and invite me to sit out the storm in their house. But I don’t want to abandon my little ship. I stay put.

The night before the storm, I step out to look up at the sky. Despite all the maps and images of the swirling white disk bearing down upon us, it’s hard to feel menaced. There’s no rain, no thunder or lightning and the wind has not yet touched down. The only sign that anything is amiss is directly overhead: low gray clouds are racing by like giant freight trains, making no sound. A surreal and sinister sight.

Morning is cancelled. Before the sun can rise, rain begins pelting down out of the sky. The drops sting like tiny razors. It’s completely unlike the monsoons in Bombay and Delhi, or the typhoons of my childhood in Thailand, because the water is cold. Hostile. The wind comes whipping in sideways, howling. Huge trees are bowing and swaying like grass stalks. Then the power snaps off.

It is odd for me, veteran of a thousand power failures in Delhi, to experience a First World power-outage. It’s different on three counts: one, the oven’s electric, not gas. So even tea and coffee are off the menu, never mind hot food. Two, without central heating, the house becomes a freezer within an hour. Three, the landline stops working. Yes, the landline! It’s got a battery that dies after eight hours. My Samsung Galaxy cellphone, beautiful prima donna that she is, runs out of juice and faints away almost immediately.

I have a quick shower while there’s still hot water in the pipes and fill up two buckets to use in the toilet. As evening falls, I light a couple of candles, putting them inside small glass bottles so that they won’t cause a fire by falling over. It’s very still outside. The rain has stopped. At night, I blow out the candles. It is pitch dark. I cannot hear any of the other residents in the building. I consider feeling scared but it’s too exhausting. So I feel irritable instead.

Then I remember my Sony E71. Hoorah! Its robust little battery is still alive. It also receives radio signals. My Airtel roaming account finds AT&T and allows me to send out proof-of-life messages to friends and family. I listen to a trickle of news before turning off the machine to save its battery. Then I fall asleep.

The power stays off for 18 hours. The first thing I do when it returns is to make myself some tea. Then I charge my phones. I call everybody. “I’m fine!” I tell them. “It was really exciting! Nothing happened!”

( Theauthor artist tells us tales of her parallel life in Elsewhere USA in this fortnightly series marginalien.blogspot.in )