Just like Snap, We've Got The Power!

Well, now at any rate. It's not been a great week for electricity in sunny South Delhi. Every summer, the power companies fail to make enough electricity to run luxury items like air conditioners, fridges and ceiling lights. And as we're currently experiencing the warmest start to the year since records began, you wouldn't be wrong in assuming the usual electricity under supply is...proceeding as usual.

For the last couple of weeks we've been having a few power outages a day, generally for an hour or less. It's almost routine now. Everyone has a torch, and we have a portable battery back up light in the dining room in the centre of the house. The light plugs into a wall socket, charging up. When the supply to the socket fails, the light immediately turns on. You wouldn't want to read a newspaper by it, but it's plenty bright enough to see where the furniture is when all the other lights have failed. I've even cooked dinner by it.

Friday at 3.40, when we got home from collecting the kids from school, the power was off. We have no idea when it actually went off, it was on when Rod and I left the house at 12.30. Our emergency light was faithfully glowing when we opened the door. The power didn't come back on until 6.10. I quickly cooked dinner. The stove and oven are gas, so are unaffected by the electricity supply. But the cook likes to use lights to see what she's doing. Luckily the family doesn't need a lot of light to eat, as the power went off again 35 minutes later. After that we retired into the front room. We have a car battery in the corner of our living room, which works in the same way as our back up light. It keeps the television/DVD/Tata Sky box/modem/telephone going until the power company restores power to our area. So we watched Kung Fu Panda in the dark. Then, because there's not much you can do when you can't turn any lights on, Keir went to bed, Thalia went to use the last 24 minutes of her laptop's battery, Rod watched some television and I had a bath. You don't actually need electricity to have a bath, not when the water tank is on the roof and it's been another 43 degree day. What comes out of the cold water tap could be taken to court for false advertising. Rod gave me the battery back up light, but within moments it forgot it was in a beige bathroom, and thought it was in a nightclub, flashing on and off like a strobe. The power had been off for so long our battery backup light had died. So not Duracell then. We switched to candles. You don't want the heat, but you need to not fall over the furniture. It's a dilemma. Power was eventually restored at 10.10, when I blew out the candles and turned on all the AC's.

Saturday was a much better day. Maybe the power company was trying to make up for the previous day's incredibly long outage... but we weren't surprised when we were plunged into the dark at 10.10 that evening. But after 10 minutes or so, Rod realised the glow he could see coming through the glass door from the dining room was a golden tone, not the cold light from the back up. The power had failed, but only in the living room and Thalia's bedroom. We checked the fuse box by the door. Everything, including the geckoes, was in order. This is not the first time we have lost power to half the house. Just before the kids and I went to Australia last summer exactly the same thing happened. An electrician came and fixed one of the main supplies into the house by using two pieces of bare wire to replace a fuse because he did not have any fuse wire. In case any long time readers thought at the time, "I wonder how long it will be before that catches fire", about 10 and a half months.

So it was dark outside, after the burnt wires stopped glowing, and it was dark in half our house. Too late to do anything about it, we moved Thalia into Keir's room and watched DVDs in our room where the AC still worked.

In the morning Rod reported the fault to Mr Gupta who lives on the top floor. He's in charge of building maintenance and repair. Mr Gupta said he'd send an electrician in half an hour. Three and a half hours later, Rod called him to check when the electrician would arrive. Mr Gupta hadn't called one yet, he'd been busy. So Rod told him he would go and fix the fault himself. And he told him, falsely, that he would have to turn off the electricity to the entire building, including Mr Gupta's apartment, while he did this. That seemed to get his attention, because within three minutes Mr Gupta was standing next to Rod. Rod pulled the fuses to our floor and the top floor (but not the first floor, because it wasn't their job to get the electrician). Mr Gupta sent his houseboy to the market to find an electrician. The houseboy returned with one five minutes later. How busy can you be, if all you're going to do is ask someone else to do something for you! But half an hour, and 150 rupees later, we had power back. Not sure the work's been done to an extremely high standard, but it only has to last five weeks... and when I return to Britain, I will be well qualified for a job as a cinema usherette!