Susan LaffertyNew Delhi, 2012. The electricity goes off. Right after a loud explosion. Most likely a transformer that’s blown in the neighborhood.
It’s late afternoon when shadows lengthen and shade our second floor flat. I sit in the dark. And wait.
The mental checklist forms automatically. Honed by long experience. If it’s an extended power outage, there are things to do.
Sun beat down on flat roofs in long Karachi summers.
Electricity failed. Lines melted. Disconnecting and falling in the street.
The interior of our home was an oven. Climbing over 100 degrees at times.
We read of people dying in Chicago one summer. Why? Fans combined with heat above a certain temperature in their apartments turned those spaces into convection ovens.
Oh. We were getting cooked.
Night sky. Stars lost in the city’s loud light.
Raised in a large urban center, I look back on my childhood. And remember something different.
Limited electricity. Unpredictable outages.
Frequent darkness in the evenings.
And stars.
