Living in the dark

GS Aujla

BLACKOUTS are nothing new to Chandigarh. Citizens of our vintage recall the 1965 and 1971 wars when blackouts were just a siren away throwing the entire city into total darkness, disturbed occasionally by the sound of anti-aircraft guns booming in the vicinity of the city.

But this time around, it was a preannounced powermen strike that heralded the power outage. Perhaps certain amount of overconfidence prevented the bureaucracy from going through all the modalities of a contingency planning. Considering that the city hosts the capitals of two important states and a union territory, the strategic planning left loopholes in its execution that were no less glaring than its consequences. Perhaps inadvertently!

Electricity being an important part of our daily working, it had a cascading effect on all aspects of life. From kitchens and bathrooms to computers and life-saving machinery, everything went dysfunctional. Since the city dwellers are not used to maintaining home generators, the poor inverters had to take load beyond their capacity. Those who were able to hire generators had to pay punitive charges. The biggest misnomer was supposed to be a ‘silent’ generator that made a little less sound than the non-silent ones. The ‘darkness visible’, as Milton would put it, was extremely eerie.

What was really unconscionable was that some areas and houses had regular supply of power while others were denied this. The power distribution system perhaps is too technical to explain this ‘unequal treatment’. The ‘powerless’ public and powermen faced a trust deficit and a disturbing communication gap.

We now know that nearby 40 lives were hanging in the air due to the collapse of life-support system and vital surgeries. Patients and their praying wards must have gone through a harrowing time in those crucial hours.

And finally when the ‘lights’ came, everybody thanked one’s stars that the man-made ordeal was over. It was a realisation of how essential this vital service has become in our lives. Any further wait would have been more portentous. We have now learnt how an emergency of this magnitude is to be managed in future. It is never too late to learn. May such an emergency never arise.

Join Whatsapp Channel of The Tribune for latest updates.