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12 October 2005
In which the virtues of a circuit-breaker are extolled in cases when one can be found
Until this June, staying in California meant using gas to cook at home. I spited the electric stove and conjoined to it all my bad memories of desolate Midwest winters; sunny California meant no more of melting plastic, charred vegetables and denaturing cooking oil. I could only be stoical when electric stoves returned to roost in the new apartment -- surely, for the vastly expanded living experience cooking with coils could not be all that bad. Sooty scrapes and plastic-milk in airier environs with an exclusive patio and a fireplace sitting beneath engraved mirrors upended any previous frivolous grouches. And in fact, for a few months I thought we got along splendidly. The coils needed tender care and ample patience, I surmised.No more. What gods wrought upon us these fiendish agents of the devil? Last evening, as I had four of these smouldering coils with flecks of glowing ember passing their little-begotten heat onto water, starch and stringed beans the coils or the coils that heat them exploded and sent the entire "unit" plunging into darkness. All of a sudden, our vulnerability was acutely felt. I had heard tell of the California blackouts while ensconced safely in the Midwest where common sense and gentility always trumped opulent profligacy. I had lived the days of wanton load-shedding in Bangalore when transformers going *phut* in Rajajinagar meant living under starlight and thin glowing candle-pricks that fizzled with ebony cinders of burnt wings. I now cringed in my private darkness with all the world about me alit and atrot. But if it were burnt electrical fuses that needed replacing in India -- and often times you would need to run down to hardware stores that sold them and fit them for you -- there were thankfully circuit-breakers that avoided opening up the fuse-box and replacing the filament. So it was in our case, that one of the circuit-breakers had valiantly done its job albeit not without acoustic side-effects. They just needed resetting -- and so we set about in bluelight of timed afternight cellphone-displays to figure where our circuit-breakers dwelt and guarded our home and hearth from fierce, fluctuating electrical unleashings. The three in the corridor adjoining the living room were experimented upon, with some advising caution -- there were quite some number of us assembled for a dinner -- against switching lights on and off with abandon. None worked at which point of time we arrived at the consensus that there must exist an overlord circuit-breaker not immediately in full view of its charges.
We scurried downstairs to our garage-underbelly that also housed our tariff-meters. The circuit-breaker, Arun observed then and I failed to spot then, seemed functional and so was duly ignored. We concluded that this failing was beyond self-correction. We left for the night for brighter and more reliable ambiences where food provided could be consumed without apprehension of what we consumed with it or of what we missed consuming with it but not before grudgingly laying down sheets and newspapers to prepare ourselves for the thawing ice-age from inside the refrigerator. What we needed, as my mother would often say to me, was light. The circuit-breaker was easily located in the morning's daylight and reset back on and sure enough, all was restored to order. Our home was back fighting fit, but our hearth not fully operational yet. Still, defunct electrical cooking units are a lot more tolerable when you have so much living space to vent out your complaints in.
