Power On!

The advertisement was playing full blast on the television set when electricity decided to play hide and seek. Suddenly India and particularly its commerce capital were switched off the map triggering a deluge of words from the prone figure in the recliner placed close to the TV set! The patriarch of the family very much addicted to the game of 11 men hitting and chasing a tiny red ball, had been in a bad mood for the past few days. The ‘Monkey gate’ had left him fuming and his knowledge of the evolution of man from apes came pouring out targeting anyone within a couple of yards from his seat.
“There was a time when Bombay, yes Bombay never suffered from this malaise of living in the dark. Now look at the state of this city…… it is returning to the dark ages….you cannot rely on anyone, the term reliance has become obsolete…” Grandfather kicked off his next innings of sixers for the day.
A tinny voice piped in from the next room, “Bijli nahin paani nahin, aam jantha me dum nahin…. Granpa, what is dum?” The old man’s young helper was always at hand to add more power to the words and actions of the only member of the family who stood by him through thick and thin and lightened his load of punishments. They were co-conspirators in many a crime. “What was that again…where did you pick up that line Sunny?” asked the old man. At his age reading the newspaper was just a pretense, more to look at the semi-clad models on page 3 than to read any print. Even today his failing vision had prevented him from reading the day’s news item in fine print, that the Reliance workers had taken out a morcha to the energy minister demanding double pay, (the President of India had set an example to follow!) more sub-stations in the compounds of private buildings and Nano cars for engineers to travel fast through the perpetual traffic jams in Mumbai, not Bombay!
The small citizen was indeed a chip of the old block and the explanation was ready, “I heard it at the procession of people that passed the school gate yesterday, people were singing this song……Bijli nahin paani nahin, aam jantha me dum nahin…what is dum grandpa?” The tiny figure came into view and positioned itself next to his grandfather’s chair repeating his query once again. “What is dum grandpa, is it dum maro dum?”
Shaking his wisened head the grandfather replied, “I’ll tell you what dum is….dum is power, you see those wires above the roadside, they carry the power to light up our homes and to put life into our TV sets. And don’t say dum maro dum, at least not until you reach a decent age…”
The little master as inquisitive as the stray pup sniffing the roadside garbage would not give in easily. All lessons in life are not taught and learnt in our classrooms, some are picked up from encounters on the roads and public places. “I think the people in the procession were kind to say that aam jantha should be given power, they knew that people do not have power. I think more people should have joined them. When I finish school, I want to join all the processions because they give power to the people. I love that song that says power on, India on!... but how can India be switched on?”
Now even the doting old man was equally confused. He changed the topic in an effort to change tracks. He saw a replica of himself in this son of his son, the heir to not only his Life Insurance fund but also to his talents, interests and hobbies. He lost no opportunity to inculcate in the youngster a love of Cricket that kept the nation talking, eating and even sleeping cricket. So he tried again, ‘If you become a cricketer, you’ll have all the power in the world. You can earn money for losing, import cars without duty, you can build ten palatial homes all over India, own hotels and restaurants. You can also become a builder and make pots of money. Do you not want to be a cricketer?”
“But what if someone calls me a monkey? I won’t mind if they call me an ape because the science teacher says we were apes once upon a time… and then we became people. So apes are ok. Monkeys are not..” Outspoken Sunny spoke his mind without hesitation. Grandfather was dumbstruck. This was simply getting worse. Every topic was ending in confusion. What were the teachers teaching children these days? Instead of birds and bees they were teaching them about apes and monkeys… well, times had surely changed!
Just then the TV screen lit up for power had made a timely entrance saving grandpa from further confusion. He quickly changed the channel to news. The charming newsreader was saying that the government if voted to power once again will promise to take electricity to every Indian village by the year 2010.
A small smile hovered around the old man’s mouth as he remembered that the same government had made the same promise before the previous elections five years ago… only the newsreader was different then! Suddenly he was forcefully drawn back to the news item as she continued to announce that the heir to the powerful industrial empire the nation relied upon, had gifted his wife an aircraft on her birthday and now he would build a sixty storey house for himself, 20 storeys of which would only house his cars! Power to the people, to some people, muttered the old man as the TV screen went blank again, power
had gone to where it came from!