Load-Shedding Sayantika Mandal
People in my town still call it load-shedding, when the world plunged into darkness every summer evening. We waited on the terrace For the night breeze, sweat gathered in the folds of my skin as my father Showed me the stars, balls of gases burning or perhaps, already dead. The darkness lingered for an hour or two, or even more. My mother asked me to finish my homework before the darkness began. Wikipedia says it’s common in developing countries. Our power utilities must shed the load to run. Anybody with power must shed The load to run. The British shed the burden by carving apart our land, like hacking off limbs, and did not look behind. They found Coal on the river bed that runs by my town. And knew to unearth it. Even the trains here are named Black Diamond and Coalfield. A tribal man climbs down the shafts, baskets full of black rise up. His pickaxe splinters the crust, black dust enters his nose. Soot fills the porous sacs of his lungs, bronchi and alveoli. He coughs and dies. His son continues the legacy, he can’t shed The load, he has no power. He stands there, inside the earth our henchman, for we must scoop out the bowels of the planet, Like hungry vultures, to devour the carcasses of ancient trees. Smoke belches from the roast pit of fossilized plant-bodies turning Turbines. Amber glow of sodium vapor floods the streets of night. Perhaps being plunged into the darkness is what we deserve, What we were meant for. To be lurking bat-like in caves, where Dripping water from damp ceilings reminds us of melting ice, A whisper echoes on those wet walls, hearkening a new World, saying, Let there be Dark.
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