Ohh…! ‘Load Shedding’

Load shedding, a term that doesn’t exist in the English dictionary, has affected our lives in Nepal to a great extent. We have become so dependent on electricity that our lives are incomplete without it, our office work takes hours to complete because of it, and once we finally complete our day’s work we come home to darkness, not because we forgot to pay the electricity bills but because of load shedding, a fictional word that’s causing havoc in our lives.

Our life gets tougher at home, with the microwave and rice cooker on vacation. Heating leftovers or cooking a quick meal is not that easy anymore. Tired and irked because of the long hard day you have spent at work, you are forced to prepare supper in candle light because the kids forgot to charge the emergency lights before the power cut.

Cursing the constant never ending power cuts, you finally finish preparing a simple supper nothing too fancy. The kids complain that the food isn’t good enough, the small one keeps chanting for his favourite dish, and your husband gets all worked up cause you just shouted at the kids, and you think to yourself what a perfect day, nothing has gone your way.

Your so-called sweet hubby keeps complaining because he can’t watch the news, and to make matters worse the kids keep nagging you to let them stay home tomorrow because they haven’t completed their home work. It feels like you are in the middle of a battlefield, and you can’t even take a relaxing hot bath because the geyser’s gone shopping with all his other mates.

You can’t complete your assignments because your laptop hasn’t been charged after you last used it in the office. This is the second time this has happened, and your boss just doesn’t seem to understand how difficult meeting a deadline is these days. I mean, when you leave home there’s no electricity, there are power cuts at work which makes your life tougher than usual, and when you reach home there are no lights, how on earth can anyone meet deadlines in such conditions? It’s easy for bosses like him to complain they can afford the power cuts, but what about the rest of us who don’t really make much?

Tired and all worked up, you decide to do the next best thing - help the kids do their homework. But sitting in the study room without the heater in winter is a nightmare, so you cuddle up in the children’s room and get them to work. The little one is so sleepy you end up having to complete the work for him and that too in his horrific handwriting while the big one looks all muddled up and confused with the sums. He is as bad as you were in maths.

With the kids snuggled up tightly and ‘no lights’, you decide to check on your hubby, only to find him snoring away on the couch. He has a little smile on his face that makes you forget all your worries. Now the only thing you are left to do is drag him to bed, but over the years he has grown so fat that getting him up is next to impossible. So you are left with no other option but to snuggle up next to him, at least it’s warmer than sleeping alone in the room.