So summer is here again. How do I know? Because I am constantly tired and sleepy and grouchy. Why am I like this? Oh I’ll tell you why.

Because I live in the backwater of a third world country run by politicians who are corrupt sons-of-bitches who will not make any infrastructure investments unless they bear fruit within the time frame that these douchebags will stay in office i.e. a couple of years, five at best. What they will do is spend crores and crores of tax payer money on destroying forests and constructing huge, hagiolatry parks with ugly ass statues of themselves.

The huge statue of this particular stoop-shouldered ugly-ass bitch now stands covered in blue tarp because our toothless and frankly quite gutless Supreme court finally found its testicles and succeeded in putting a leash on her and making her stop the construction. So the park, the huge Dalit monument and the statues themselves just stand there, in limbo, an eyesore, a criminal waste of time, effort, money and a reminder of the pointless destruction of literally thousands of trees, a pretty jogging track, a park for kids and valuable and scarce green cover that the area could ill afford to lose.

So, coming back to the upshot of all this. Every year the onset of summer is heralded by rolling power cuts for hours and hours. Last summer just to fuck with us, the powers that be (UPSEB) thought that it would be insanely funny to regularly cut the power at 7 AM each morning!

This summer the wankers at UPSEB have gone back to their tried and tested modus operandi of cutting the power at about 1 AM each night, just the time that you have really gotten into some deep sleep. So, by about 2 or 3 AM your backup power source (the inverter) has run out of juice and died in a plaintive high pitched eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! wail that signifies ‘Low Battery’. But this wailing does not wake you up, oh no! You have already been tossing and turning for half an hour in bed covered with sweat and mosquito bites as the steadily decreasing voltage from the inverter has made your ceiling fan’s blades whirl around slower and slower and made the gaang! gaaaanng! gaaaaaaaaaaang! gaaaaaaaaaaaaanngggg! sound successively more and more irritating until the blades have just given up on trying to stir up the molasses of warm, humid air in your room and have crawled to a halt with a aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! sound to inform you that they really are trying to move but just like Star Trek “They don’t have the powerrrrrrrr!”

So, you have gotten out of bed and turned off the fan but the inverter dies anyway and after lying in bed and listening to it for what seems like an hour you finally go “Fuck this shit!” and toss off what little of the covers you haven’t already kicked off and go and try to start the generator. So you perform the little routine that you can do in your sleep now.

Move the fuel switch from ‘off’ to ‘start’ position.

Turn the choke on.

Grab the pull cord and heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeavvve!

Nothing.

Repeat about 15 times until you have got your heart rate up and have a good, steady stream of curse words going under you breath.

Catch your breath. Stop wheezing.

Repeat about 10 more times.

Slap your forehead and check the kerosene tank. Full.

Check the Petrol tank. Empty.

(Let me clarify here that the world renowned engine boffins from Honda Motor Company in their infinite wisdom designed this petrol tank to hold at least a few litres of fuel. Good for a month of starts at least. But they also designed it in a way that let all petrol in it evaporate within a few hours of the tank being filled.)

The result is that I now have to go get a torch, find the Coke bottle full of petrol we keep somewhere, fill the tank just enough to get the generator started this time while taking care not to drop too much of it on myself so that if the shit does hit the fan I don’t scream and burn for too long.

Done.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeavve another few times.

Result!

The generator coughs and splutters to life and covers me with sooty black smoke full of unburnt hydrocarbons.

Turn the choke off.

Switch the fuel tap from ‘Petrol’ to ‘Kerosene’ while trying to inhale as few carcinogens as possible.

(This generator starts on petrol but runs on kerosene for reasons that I am too stupid or lazy to comprehend, especially at 4 AM)

We have power.

I walk back to my room closing all the doors between me and the generator to muffle the godawful racket.

Switch the fan back on.

Peel the moist sheets off the bed. Mosquitos on the wall. Swat the blood-fattened little bastards, fall into bed and try to relax and get some sleep.

Almost as soon as I finally fall asleep the alarm rings to signify the all-too-soon arrival of a new day.

Mother.                                  Fucker.

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• Summer ’09

Random, Rants