A PAUSE IN THE WIRES

 

Imagine a small town on a cloudy afternoon, when a few raindrops and a restless wind begin their play. Suddenly, televisions flicker and go blank, leaving behind only a stubborn pop-up message: “NO SIGNAL. CHECK THE ANTENNA.” People instinctively reach for their phones to call the customer care of their DTH providers, only to hear the familiar, rehearsed line: “How is the weather in your locality? Is it raining or cloudy? Then the signal will be weak.” The reassurance comes with the promise that once the skies clear, everything will return to normal.

But this time, it doesn’t.

In an instant, the town plunges into stillness as the power goes out. With no electricity, every appliance falls silent—lights, fans, refrigerators, mixer-grinders, even the humble water pump that fills the rooftop tanks. Kitchens, once noisy with the whirl of machines, are reduced to half-prepared meals. Chutneys remain unground, rice sits uncooked, and people adjust to a bare minimum of food.

The outage spreads deeper. Routers blink red, fiber connections collapse, and Wi-Fi vanishes without warning. Phones lose their lifeline to the internet. Towers, unable to withstand nature’s undercurrent, fall quiet. The chatter of notifications and streaming videos is replaced by silence, heavy and strange.

At first, irritation takes over—children fidget without cartoons, elders grumble without news, and workers feel stranded without calls or emails. But slowly, as hours stretch into an unfamiliar rhythm, people begin noticing things they once ignored: the rustle of leaves, the rhythm of raindrops, the play of candlelight, and conversations that unfold face-to-face.

What begins as chaos becomes an unexpected pause. The town unknowingly steps back into a simpler time, closer to nature, though no one is ready to admit the quiet joy of it. Only later, in memory, will they realize that for a brief while, when technology fell away, life had its own gentle glow.

(This blog post is a part of BLogchatter's #Bloghop. Details here: https://www.theblogchatter.com/blogchatter-blog-hop-a-new-way-to-write-collectively)