Slaves of technology

At 8:25 p.m. tonight I was thinking of the work I had done and the work I still had to do before I could call it a day (or more likely, a midnight). My flatmate was reading the newspaper and thinking of the amount of studying she had left for the last day before her examination. We were both sending text messages all over the country simultaneously while I tap-tap-tapped data into my computer and she flipped channels on the television in between reading the latest mess-ups by the world's who's who in the political arena.

Then suddenly she puts down the newspaper on the bed and says "Damn, today was Earth night where we had to switch off the lights between 8:30 and 9:30 p.m. and I was going to do that". I said "well, lets". So we switch off all the lights and fans. But this is Mumbai and it it hot. So we draw the curtains and open the windows. There is a beautiful, cool breeze that flows in and surprises me. It is very pretty at night from my window and I wonder why I did not notice it before.

"But we are not doing it right", my flatmate mumbled. "How is that?" I ask. She points at my laptop- that, with its rotten cracked monitor, which obscures about 50% of the screen- was humming tunelessly on my desk. "But my work", I say, suddenly not so sure if I wanted to be the good Samaritan anymore. But on my flatmate's persistent nagging I reluctantly powered the ancient machine off, while calculating the extra hours I would have to put into my already over-burdened job to complete the day's target.

I turn around and my hostile expression changes to one of sadistic pleasure as I point to the television and emit a victorious "Aha!". "No way, I can't miss this episode of Brothers and Sisters", my room-mate wails but had to switch it off in the end, along with our mobile phones.

So there we were, twiddling our thumbs and wondering what to do now that there was darkness and more importantly, nothing to strain our eyes on.

But it turned out all right. There was left-over pulses and gobhi-aloo-matar from lunch that was heated by the light a candle and eaten with slices of bread, there was good conversation about families and dreams and regrets, sprinkled with a fair amount of bitching. There was the soft breeze coming in through the windows and the glow of the street-lights and the noise from the traffic on the roads and it seemed to me that we had thrown out our schedules, worries, television soaps, laptops and mobile phones across the it too.

The hour passed too soon but I felt happy and at peace. It was not just about saving the climate and the Earth... for me, it turned out to be about unearthing my buried faith in the beauty of little moments and simple things.