Needs...

Photo by - Endevourme

4 years back. Our society is located outside the city. A society of independent houses with around 600 plots. Some people have built houses, but most of the plots are still empty. Once the so called manager of the society did some blunder with electricity bills, and put out electricity of our society for fifteen days.

After initial fighting-shouting, we were face to face with the problem. Managing life without electricity! No TV, no fans, no lights, darkness... Our problems started with television. We couldnt watch movies, favourite serials, mom couldnt see recepies, afternoon lunch time programs etc etc .Here I was on holidays, with nothing to spend my time. No lights, means mom had to cook diner in advance. We had to go erly to sleep, without fans, when mosquitoes are hovering around. Fortunately there was enough water, just we had to pull it out everyday from tank outside.
All these seeming like troubles lasted for around four days. After that we started getting used to this lifestyle. As there was no TV, we started talking more in our family. We started going more to our terrace, have walks there, chatting and talking. I picked up my old habit of reading. I started enjoying sitting in the corridor outside. Reading books, drinking tea or lemon juice. I started getting more aware of what was happening around, watching people passing by and observing everything around and also our neighbours as well.
Things started feeling more serene soon. Life gradually become slower. Slowly, with this, the noise levels in my mind were coming down too. I realized there were so many different kinds of birds that came around and realized how refreshing fresh air can be.
Darkness seemed a problem only initially, later to realize that sunight is unmeasurably better than electric lights. Natural soft light flowing through curtains, and it was like retuning to natural rhythm of day and night. We used to sleep erly at around 9 at night. No more watching TV at night and no artificial lights to burden our eyes. We used to communicate more amongst ourselves, touching new and fresh topics which we erlier missed somehow. This awareness and little bit of isolation from artificiality helped me focus more on what we had. Like i started to appreciate that we had enough water, and understood its value. Somehow if we get everything effortlessly, we dont appreciate what we get. We need a drama, and we create needs, virtual needs and we try to satisfy ourselves with them. We extend our needs from food,shelter,clothing to cellphone, PC, i-pod, TV, blogs, mails, onsite trips...the list is endless. We want what others have, or maybe we want what others want. We have become like flock of sheeps, dumb sheeps, they dont know where they are going, what they know is just to follow others. We create needs, maybe they satisfy us, but we need listen to ourselves when pleasure turns to dependency.
Yes, electricity, TV, cellphones etc are necessory, but these things have their own place. And they cannot replace other things which are more natural and more human, like communication in a family, and our connection with the surroundings. Maybe that is one reason why people in old times seem more serene and sane than we are.
Finally after some settlements the electricity came back....and i mentally thanked the person who invented the ON/OFF switch.