Rough Days & Silver Linens..

I'll be honest. Today was a pretty shitty day.

The electricity supply from the city yesterday was hopeless and we ended up having about a 6.5 hour power outage in the afternoon. This is pretty common for Varanasi and you do your best to get used to it and get on with life even though it's in the mid-high 30's (that's Celsius) with 75-100% humidity. We've been fortunate enough to have an inverter which means that when the city power is on it charges up our battery and then when the city shuts the power off, we have enough charge to run small items like fans and lights, whilst big ticket items like fridges and A/C's have to just sit and wait. But there is one sound which strikes fear into my heart like no other sound can. The high pitch squeal of the inverter running dry. When I hear this sound, it's the starting pistol signalling that my life is about to get infinitely more difficult. 

Often no power means no water, and not knowing how long you’ll be without power and water is a major headache. About 3 weeks ago a big transformer in our suburb blew up and we didn’t hear about this till it was too late. We ended up having to move into a hotel in a different part of town until the power could be restored 3 days later. A week prior to that our Landlord’s stabilizer which powers the water pump blew up and we were without water for 3 days. In the last 12 months, the Bundar (monkeys) which terrorise our part of the world chewed through the main power cable to our house on 3 different occasions and each time it took 24+ hours to repair. A squealing inverter signals that these wonderful things are happening.

Wild Flower and I heard it last night at about 10pm. The kids had been asleep since 7:30 but once the fan are off it's generally only about 10minutes in this sort of heat and humidity before they'll wake up in a pool of their own sweat and not go back to sleep for sometime. And sadly that's pretty much what happened. We're fortunate enough to have our Ashram just up the path from our house and the inverter there still had a decent amount of charge and so we packed up our stuff (and two very sweaty little kids) and relocated in search of a functioning fan. 

It was not until a couple of hours later that both kids finally fell asleep and lets just say the rest of the night was hard. Lots of waking up from the heat, lots of weird noises outside, lots of little people tears. 

The next morning we were all up before 6am and thankfully found that the city power was back on and charging the inverter in the Ashram. Excitedly we moved back home but were dismayed to to discover that there was no power coming to our house.. cue more little people tears.

The electricity cable to our house comes via a Kali Temple (you remember Kali, she’s the goddess in Indian Jones & the Temple Of Doom, yeah, that one!) that's on the property, then via another house, then finally to ours. None of these had power and as has happened other times in the past, yesterday something blew up in the Kali Temple yet they didn't feel compelled to do anything about fixing it.

I went and spoke with the Landlords who said they had already contacted an Electrician and that he was on his way but left that conversation not feeling convinced. Lets just say that 8 text messages, 5 phone calls, 4 increasingly aggravating visits to the landlords and 11 hours later, the Electrician arrived. Taking a total of 3 minutes he pulled out 3 fuses, cut one piece of wire then twisted it back together again, stuck the same 3 fuses back in where they came from and cha-ching, we once again had power!

We did our best to keep the kids happy throughout the day (which in this heat was hard work) and are praising God right now that the A/C in our bedroom is working as we all slip into bed, but all in all it was a pretty lousy day. I'm dreading the next time we'll have an extended stretch without power (which will happen soon enough), and I'm dreading the sleepless nights with crying kids which accompanies it, and I'm dreading the ridiculously long day trying to get our power lines repaired, so you might be wondering where the Silver Lining is in this story? And it's these.

In amongst the pain of today we were able to witness this amazing procession of gorgeous coloured Saris after gorgeous coloured Saris blowing about in the breeze from the Sari dying building that borders our property. Sure it doesn't quite make up for the accompanying sleep deprivation and heat exhaustion, but it certainly broke up an otherwise terribly lousy day with splashes of beauty and glimpses of something transcendent, and for this, I am truly grateful.