“THE LIFE OF MY LIGHT.”

About ten years ago, a Norwegian, entrepreneur, came calling, through an acquaintance, in Europe. He had heard about the industrial advance generally in India, and was particularly drawn to the small scale chaps in Pune, who have earned great acclaim in Western Europe, for their quality products.
He was my house guest. I introduced him to several of my great industrialist friends. He was mighty happy about striking great deals with the innovators here. Towards the close of his business-trip, a funny incident occurred.
A close friend of mine, a great innovative engineer came home with his product, very hopefully to bag a big order. The product was, an auto-electric- battery, which gets charged on the mains, and whenever the power-supply is tripped, it glows. It was reasonably priced too.

My Norwegian visitor was extremely appreciative of the contraption.
“I have never seen anything like this before. “
My Pune engineer friend was ecstatic. He was already on the ninth cloud, of dreamy success.
My foreign visitor complimented the young entrepreneur profusely, and said,
“My young fellow, I have to disappoint you. This device will be of no use for any of the Western buyers. I am 54 now; and in my living memory, in my country there was never a single time, when we were without power supply. If you know, it happened once in US for a while in eighties, and it became international news. Even TIME magazine published a cover-story on this rare happening. “

WELCOME NEWS
Recently I read the electrifying HEADLINE news. The entire Pune Region can heave a sigh of relief to learn about this. The load-shedding, power-cuts, maintenance shutdowns, were now to be a thing of the past. Thanks to the industrialists for lending their captive gen-set power to the grid etc. . My jaw dropped in disbelief.
I have lived with this wanton disregard of the consumer, by the MSEB for over 25 long years now. It is their mind-set which has to change. Surely there is technology available in the present context, to fix problems. They are used to cussedly throwing the switch, without regard to the consequent damage to the consumers. A sudden change is rather disconcerting to stomach. My home-physician could not fix the jaw. The good old MSEB came to my rescue.
The same day, just for the fun of it, the power tripped for a while, unannounced. Just like that. Jaw fixed up, naturally, without any medication.
On Thursday 15th June, 06, half of Pune did not have power, for as much as eight hours, between 10 am to 6 pm. Reason? Some maintenance issue. I have a lock-jaw, now. For the past two months or so, I visit my office in cantonment area, on Thursdays, there is a total power shut-down, ever since 6 a.m. till the evening.
No lifts, no light, no comps no telephones, as they are through EPABX. Whole of November and now half of December, we are” power-less” on all Thursdays. Some maintenance this.
We are all having a forced holiday on Thursdays, undeclared. I wonder how nobody seems to crib or complain.

I am establishing contact with my Norwegian friend to supply technical know-how, to our chaps in Pune, about ENSURING a continuous power-supply , during maintenance shut-downs; which surely they too must be taking.

M. S. RANADE
mranade@vsnl.com
PUBLISHED IN TIMES OF INDIA EAST SIDE SUPPLEMENT ON FRIDAY, 19TH JAN, 2007.