Batti Bandh !!

It was 15th December... the "Batti Bandh" day... Mumbai was supposed to blacken out for 1 hour from 7.30 in the evening, to save power consumption, to spread awareness against the Global Warming...

It was 7.30 pm, and I promptly lit up the candles for mom... switched off the lights and electrical appliances (except the refrigerator) and went out for a stroll...

The school kids from my building were looking dejected.. They had come in the morning to request us to switch off the lights during that one hour... It seemed that their pleas had fallen on deaf ears..

I walked upto them and asked them whats the matter...

"Bhaiyya, we had requested everyone, but nobody seemed to be interested... they all say that if noone is switching off, why should we... what difference am I gonna make alone.... now what should we do??"

I was with another friend of mine.. my school mate... we decided, it was time for us to take some action, at least for the sake of the efforts the school kids had taken...

We took some sheets of paper, and started visiting everyone's homes... asking them to write down the reasons and sign, stating why aren't they shutting down for an hour... each flat we used a single piece of paper... We were not surprised to see the same reason from all the 15 flats...

"Why should we switch off if everybody else is keeping it on?"

Now came the second part... we again went door-to-door... showing them all the papers from the 15 flats and asked them to comply... the kids were quite enthusiastic in this matter...

Embarrassed, people did finally switch off their appliances... and we had "Batti Bandh" in 10 out of the 15 flats in our building... (The other 5 slammed their doors on our faces!! We thought of cutting down the mains to their flats, but since this was a voluntary effort, we didn't...)
Then, we took a box of candles, and lit them in the entire corridor and the staircase upto the fourth floor and switched off the lights for the same... The kids suggested that one of them should stay at every floor, just in case some elderly person needs help in getting up and down the stairs...

In the end, the program at out place was a success!! And I was pretty satisfied, that in some way, I too was able to contribute towards it...

But I was quite disappointed at the callous and ignorant attitude shown by the Mumbaikars... From our terrace, I could see no change from what I see every evening, and that none of them had taken any efforts towards this awareness campaign... Global Warming, they say, won't be affecting them in any way... They don't realize that it would be their future generations that would be at an enormous loss if we at this moment, don't take any action...

I sincerely laud the efforts taken by the youth of Mumbai in trying to make this campaign a success... I think that even at least 1 hour load shedding in all areas in Mumbai would contribute a great deal towards power saving...