Load Shedding and human beings

When I read the news stories about the power outages affecting millions of people in the northeastern U.S. this week, I remember Overload. A book by Arthur Hailey that talked about the upheaval within a power company when there was a possibility that they would have to shut off power to certain pockets of a city for a short duration. There was intrigue and nail-biting fear because a power cut would mean lawsuits and the potential collapse of the firm.

I also remember laughing at how afraid these fictional power company executives were. Because I lived in a country where power cuts were a part of everyday life. We used to call them load shedding and would hope that our area's turn would come in the evening and not during the hottest periods in the day. Nobody could ever think of suing the power company for load shedding. Like I said, it was just a part of life.

Back to the northeastern U.S. in November 2011. There is mass concern about the power outages cutting off access to heat even as an extreme winter approaches. Last year's blizzards and relentless snow make that a very real fear. Especially for people who have always had the warm indoors to come back to, even in the dead of winter.

As I think about this, I see the picture on my calendar -- a group of Himachali people who grow a popular variety of garlic -- with smiles on their weathered faces. Himachal Pradesh, in the mid-ranges of the Himalayas, is one of India's coldest states, and it sees snow through winter. And like most other cold places in India and other not-rich countries across the world, the only heat that these people have access to through their cold winters, is a bonfire shared by multiple families outside their cold and frail homes. But there is no mass concern here. Maybe because they have never known a warm indoors in the dead of winter. All they have had to rely on are thin blankets and I guess, the human ability to adapt.

An ability that seems to ebb the more well-off one (or one's country) becomes.

I hope the northeastern U.S. gets its power back because it's not fair that they suffer. But I do wish that people outside the rich country club also get to have slightly better conditions of life. Although they may have mastered the human ability to adapt, they are human too.