Flipside

We had been having power cuts for the last three weeks or so. Headaches they were to the campus inmates who prefer to be up until the early hours of the day. That day, a set of distinguished fourth years downed hastily a few more shots of vodka in the anticipation of a dry day barely 300 metres away from the Janmashtami festivities. We, five CELites sat in the ANC, stuffing ourselves with layers of cheese and chicken to kill time.
a: "Dude! did you hear that?It was on the TV that we would be having 9 hours of power cut everyday
b:Really! shit man
c: yeah, 7 to 12 in the morning, 4-6 in the evening, and 10-11 in the night
b:m******s! why don't they do anything be. This is bad, this is worse than a village. what are they doing man?
a; as kaul said, we are going back to the sixties be. the infrastructure is fallin bey!
c: till when is this supposed to continue
d: they have had bad rains , probably till next monsoons
a,b&c: what!! don't tell me that?
c:what happened re?
d:apparently lokis protested against the uninterrupted power supply that we get here whereas they have power cuts and they have had no rains so they need to run borewells
It went pretty high up in the Rajasthan government.
e: You know what, they might even cancel Oasis, because of Swine flu and stuff
b:Crap be! you can't stay at this place somebody take me out
a:f*** government , f*** lokis, they don't understand that they depend on us.Pull out this college and they would be dying on the streets.
c:Dude,they too don't get power
b: So what, we pay industrial rates bey!
c; and these bastards live on subsidies
cheap politics. but then they are serving their constituency. We don't choose Rajasthan government.
a: can't insti do anything? Dude i am so convinced why the rich hate the cribbing poor.They deserve it!
c: do something man. I wish i could set a virus on them and see each one of them die. not know what hit them.Die till they repent. Man , Indians are pussies.They can't sustain a revolution. They never have in history.
a: I feel like raping their women , selling their children to slavery.The ruling class in the olden days was soo right.
c: Come on man, we need to sleep. It's already 3.
That night C slept at 3, woke up at 11. The fan has been whirring unbroken over his head. He was wished Happy Indpendence day by a web philosopher who like him had been a member of CEL and believed in Standing Tall. C , 10 years ago had lived through a blackout that lasted 45 days, he still emphasized this emphatically to his peers when he wanted to highlight his humble origins and his consequent rise against all odds.But then , all adversities are meant to be surmounted and victory over them celebrated , not eliminated for benefit of the society.C and his many friends like A,B,D.... believe in the power of ideas, of informal discussions throwing up solutions.It is just that the rumours of a impending nine hour power cut tear off that veneer and disturb the leisurely equilibrium of ideation.
Replace A.B.C.D with Americans , Japanese , Germans and British and lokis with Indians and you would balk at the double standards of our chatter class. You would even think that privileged class of the wider world is fairer without Indians in its ranks.
If we have the right to better power than lokis just because we pay more, why do we complain of food crisis when there are people in the world who can buy things at much higher prices?Why do we even talk of iniquity?