Living through the Longest Day

I am not talking of the Longest Day, the film and the Normandy Landing of World War II, which incidently was launched in the month of June, 1944 (6th June 1944) - But l am living through the longest day of the year - 21 June, like the rest of the world, but with a great difference.

The scorching sun of the longest day [Photo: Jalalspages / Flickr]

I saw a lot of people doing yoga at the Times Square to live through the longest day - but us in Pakistan are living through the day with no electricity as spell of load shedding has further increased - perhaps to punish the nation for ousting a democratically elected PM.

While the rest of the world lives throught the day with fans and air conditioners running, we living theough the day sweating as there is no light. Desperate people are on the roads, not knowing how to register their protest as they are on the roads day and night to beg the governemnt to provide them with eletricity so that they and their families could get a good night sleep to be able to get up fresh in the morning to go to their schools and offices.

How can a person, who remains awake throughtout the night as fans are off due to load shedding. It is really making people crazy and despaerate. This forces them to get violent, damage private and goverenmnt proptery and get killed when the guns fire. But unfortunately no one seems to be taking notice except rhetoric.

Every few days, the president and the PM (now gone and soon to be replaced by a similar face) 'take a notice' and call an emergecny conference witha 'good news' for the nation that the long spells of load shedding will be curtailed - but nothing happens. Now the spell of load shedding has icreased to 4-5 hours at a stretch and nothing good is in sight.

At the time of writing the psot, it is 35 degrees celcius in my room and one can imagine what is the mercury level outside. My mobile phone indicates 40 degrees plus for Islamabad - and one can conveniently guess how hot it would be down country, specially Lahore, Multan onward.

This longest day will soon pass - but not our woes. I wish it snows tonight.

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Inverter Generat(or)ion

The long spells of load shedding - which are increasing by hours every day makes me wonder how long will this menace continue to haunt our lives.

Photograph by Jalal HB [Shared at Jalaspages / Flickr]

We grew up in days when such things were never heard of - we had plenty of everything, including electricity. Light offs were only heard in wars in the black out nights and there were never any log spells of power outages as we are witnessing today. Even such things were not there as long as three were people who could manage this country well as they loved it as their own too. 

But now it seems there are two kind of people in our country: 'People' who rule and people who are ruled. For the People who rule, there seems to be no limit to enjoy the perks and privileges at the expense of taxes paid by the People who pay and are still ruled. And this is very true when it comes to living as an ordinary human being. 

The long spells of power outages which now stretch to five to six hours at a stretch even in cities speak volumes of inefficiency of those who are mismanaging the the power sector in Pakistan. The power tariff has been raised something like 200% over the past couple of years, but still there is no relief to the people. every other day, the president and the prime minister 'take notice' of the long spells of load shedding, make statements to pledge to look into the matter - but the matter is so deep welled that it is taking much more than the required time to come up with a solution.

Load shedding has become so central to the miserable life of  the people that nothing else comes to mind while talking and writing about our grievances. When we were kids, we heard the world 'the generation gap.' But today it is the inverter generation that is cursing its life. From infants to old, students and labourers, everyone knows one world - load shedding and inverter (commonly called the UPS). From a generation gap we have become an inverter genear(or)ion or simply an inverter generation - a generation whose life now hinges more on inverters and generators than anything else.

Those who can inverters - a cheap alternative to electricity are even now facing miseries as an inverter cannot run for more than at best two hours. When the spell of lead shedding were less, these inverters helped a lot for a fan to run and a light to glow, but now even these gadgets have lost their utility. I wonder how students would be preparing for their exams with no light. In the past, poor who did not have light would go and sit under a nearby lamp-post - but now even the lamp posts are switched off.

I simply pity the inverter generation.

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