It is a quiet Friday afternoon in Amsterdam when suddenly the electricity fails. The circuit breaker, a switch governing most of our essential household appliances, has flipped to the “off” position and refuses to go back to “on”. In an attempt to relieve any electric overload happening in the house, we unplug absolutely everything — and yet the circuit breaker refuses to turn on, and we remain in the dark, literally and figuratively. The next day, we are greeted by no electricity, dead laptops, and phones as nothing could be charged. So much for my morning work call.
In Amsterdam, such an outage is a rare and unexpected occurrence. In Delhi, on the other hand, power cuts are so routine, we schedule our lives around them. Most remarkable was how life simply carried on. A diners in a restaurant became a romantic candlelight dinner, shoppers in the mall went on browsing merchandise as though nothing had happened. The only time it became really noticeable was in the summer months, when no electricity meant no air conditioning, and with temperatures soaring as high as 47°C, life became a bit unbearable. But apart from that, losing electricity was simply no big deal.
