The Great Hum

Imagine if you wake up one morning - a normal sort of morning, the kind with grey storm clouds overhead. You are eating a chocolate muffin and drinking tea, with honey [honey being nicer than sugar anyday; healthier too], when the kitchen light goes out. Great. They have started fixing the electric wires outside your flat, which implies them cutting off your electricity the whole day. So, with no TV, no radio, CDs or the Net, you are only grateful for the fact that there are no distractions to well...distract you from your revision. Then, you see that the goldfish in the fishtank are gulping air like crazy, since the stupid aeration device things all work on electricity too and are therefore not working. Oh yay. You are forced to manually pump air into the tank for the fish with a makeshift balloon pump your sis digs up in the store room. It is boring work, and you try to study at the same time.

Then, the grey clouds part and you start fanning yourself with the georaphy notes you are holding. You also realise that you cannot read the notes that you are fanning, and take out a second set of notes to fan yourself while you study, pump and complain that the goldfish are not your pets. You sister swiftly rebuts that they belong to your father and it is a gorgonic task for her too. Hah. I'll believe that. You two take shifts to pump air as your sis is convinced they'll die without human intervention on this electricity-less day. Afterall, the poor goldfish didn't ask to be stuck in a smelly tank did they? One almost hopes that they did, so that you can leave them alone. In the end, frustration sets in. The air is stifling and every external sound seems extra loud.

In the end, you wash your hands off pumping, studying and complaining and have a nap. When you wake up, you realise that an empty feeling inside you is gone. You eargerly test out the fan - it switches on! Yes! The Great Hum is back! The electricity that is your house's life blood is back after an afternoon's hiatus to wherever it is electricity goes. You can almost sense it humming through the cement walls, in their plastic and rubber casings.

Funny how we never notice that electricity is always present. I can imagine a world without electrical power. It'll look like the War of the Worlds, only its humans against humans. Haha. May electricity outlive us.