Art of darkness

A load off
Kathmandu

It's really, really, really dark here a whole lot of the time. Not too cold, mind you...but dark.


"Load-shedding," the south Asian euphemism for scheduled power cuts, has taken hold now for more than 49 hours per week. A few months ago I heard it would be up to 65 hours a week before the winter's end.

I went to the Nepal Electric Authority website to try to download the "new schedule," which seems to change daily. At least, I thought, I can schedule stuff (showers, battery charging, computer work) around the blackouts.

Not only is the schedule posted on their English language website all in Nepali script, it's too small even for someone who can read Nepali (ie, me) to decipher. The rest of the web site (all in English) is devoted to explaining the plan for ending the load-shedding problem "within the next four years."

It's one thing to have scheduled power cuts. But they are not even following the schedule. For instance, today's posted cuts were from 11.30am-1.30 pm and then again in evening. At 2pm, the power was still on, only to cut off at 3pm instead.

Various people try to excuse or defend load-shedding in various ways:

--We depend on hydroelectricity and the rivers are frozen
(This was true in Ladakh, north India in the wintertime, too. But they made a schedule and stuck to it. Midnight to 6pm, every day. From 6pm, when it got really dark, we had power till midnight.)

When the rivers weren't frozen, back in September, it was

--The broken dam in Butwal (south Nepal/Bihar region) means there is less ability to produce power

But, before the dam disaster which displaced tens of thousands of people, other excuses were:

--One of the hydroelectric projects went down and it will take three years (THREE) to fix

or,

--We have greater hydroelectric potential, with all our rivers, than any country in the world; however we haven't been able to finish the incomplete dam projects. The money disappeared somewhere

or even,
--we actually DO produce lots of power...but we need cash so we sell the resultant power to India.

Probably elements of all the above are true. The only excuse I do not accept, at all, is:

--This is a developing country.

It WAS a developing country. No longer. In the past three years, things have gone backward. It's more like a de-volving country.

Of course, for me and many city-dwellers, the inconvenience extends only so far as inability to charge my cell phone, or take a hot shower, use a credit card, or get a cafe latte. What about those trying to run factories, restaurants and offices? Zero productivity.

I really feel for those trying to sew garments or manufacture toothpaste. The tailors with their foot-pedalled machines and the chai-wallahs with propane stoves are really better off.

Most nights I read myself to sleep with a flashlight. What about the schoolkids struggling to do homework in the early dark (around 4.30 pm here now)?

Sales of diesel and kerosene fuel should be booming; let's just pray that the Terai (Nepal's flat, dusty corridor to the Indian "mainland") stays open, since that's where all the fuels are imported from. The largest places (star hotels, for example, or major supermarkets) have diesel generated backup.

Crime has gone up in the city, as not only is there an earlier dusk these days, but the streets are completely dark a great deal of the night. Sometimes it seems the power is off more than it's actually on. People, especially women, are forced home earlier.

Of all the things Nepalis have rioted and shut down the city or valley over - raised transport fares, petrol prices, unsolved murders and unavailable school textbooks -why doesn't anyone get up in arms about this?

It would almost be better to be up in a remote village where no one relies on electricity, and everyone goes to bed at 8pm anyway.

PACKING LIST FOR KATHMANDU:
Glow-in-the-dark clothing
Flashlight with extra extra batteries
Candles and matches or lighter
Solar-powered charger
Head-lamp
Battery-powered everything
One of those deep-sea fish that have lamps growing out of their foreheads

Disempowered

In the dark
Kathmandu, Nepal

The people who run the breakfast place were so glad to see me, I almost didn't get to eat. My long-awaited banana porridge went cold as I answered questions. Sangeeta Didi,* when did you arrive? Where have you been all this time? LONG time you not come to Nepal! How long will you stay? Sanchai na hunccha (everything all right?)

The only possible answer for this last one is a big smile, and: "Ahilye Nepal maa, sarbai dehri ramro chha." ("Now that I am in Nepal, everything is very good indeed.")

I always feel like I'm coming back to visit a family - one that's internally highly dysfunctional, but externally wearing the perpetual stoic game-face. Even the corrupt politicians and gun-toting commandos whose photos dominate the paper are followed like wayward relatives. Hmm, there's Bhattarai, haven't heard from him in a while...what's he threatening now?

But, it's official: this country is broke as a joke.

As previously mentioned, there is no diesel and no gasoline. This is because the Nepali Government can't pay its bills to Indian Oil.

After sinking to more than one billion (that's billion with a B) Nepali Rupees in debt to its creditors, India finally cut them off.

One billion rupees, can you imagine? I bet they were like, "uh....can we get ya next week??"

At first, I just thought I'd been given a hotel room with faulty wiring. But electricity is off more than it's on; power cuts are in effect eight hours a day. This was just increased from the previous six hours a day enforced since January.

We now get power from 9pm till about 1am and 6am till noon. Needless to say the few manufacturing concerns still operating in the nation are barely able to function. I am typing now in a downtown cyber-cafe running on some kind of battery backup.

If I had wanted to be in a place with no current, I could have just stayed in Ladakh.

Full news coverage here.

I'd better hit SEND before the power goes off. Din din ne, ek naya samasya aunchhu. (Every day, a new problem comes along.)


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*My real-world English name translates as "joyful religious song." The closest Nepali name equivalent is Sangeeta.