Thursday, March 22, 2012

Powerplay at Hyderabad

As summer approaches the denizens of Hyderabad have to be as strategic as the Indian cricketers in handling power plays. We are faced with power plays at any and many times during the day. Unlike cricketers we have to be prepared not just for the scheduled power cut which is fine with us but the unscheduled power cut as well. For example my days these days have a power cut at 8 a.m. sharp (making shaving etc difficult in the dark so forgive my large tranches of unshaven patches), sometimes it returns at 930 p.m. and sometimes it does not. At times when it comes at 930 a.m. it is not with the assurance that it will stay with you for a long time because it could very capriciously take off  on some vacation and return only at 12 p.m. And so on and so forth it plays hide and seek - when we are ready it is not and we are not ready it is. A very difficult thing this power play business.
Model of proposed power house one can build in houses and small communities (provided there is water)

One industrialist acquaintance of mine was lamenting the other day - why do we run an industry at all? They apparently do not have power for days together ha ha. At least two of my friends were discussing the cost of inverters. Those inverters seem to cost as much as setting up a new power project so I gave up on those! It is time to produce our own power I guess or learn to do without it. Surprisingly, when I went to pay the power bill the other day, the young lady at eseva politely told me that there would be a new user charge of Rs. 10 from this month onwards. A user charge for what? I notice that these innocuous charges are adding up at the bottom of the bill these days.

Anyway more on that later but for the present I am planning my days well thanks to the power plays just like batsmen do. Shave early, take important print outs early, pick your clothes the night before, buy candles, check for breakfast stains before heading out (since we eat in the dark), plan my non-power activities like phones, exercise, reading newspapers and some other stuff that does not ned power during non-power play times. Thanks fellows, whoever is responsible now for the power plays, for bringing this much needed discipline in my life. Without you, life would just not have been so exciting.

1 comment:

Rajendra said...

Another positive is that you can't watch TV. Like in the old days, you can go to a theatre to enjoy the AC instead of the film- assuming they are running the AC, of course.