what would have been my life if there were no electricity?

Tweet

Today, while studying a discussion on Shakespeare, suddenly I was stuck up with some nostalgia of childhood and life without electricity. Shakespeare wrote about 38 plays, about 150 sonnets, which is a very large volume by any standards. I also recalled Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained which are also large volumes. At home, we have Mahabharata by Vyasa consisting 115,000 verses, the longest epic in the world. Annamacharya 12th C. circa, compiled 32,000 verses. Tyagaraja, 19th Century compiled 32,000 verses. All this creative work was done when there was no electricity and paper. Most of the work was done on palm leaves with a sharp metal stylus. I recall my childhood days trying to write on palm leaves with a stylus. It did not work. Tired, at 7 p.m. we used to lie down on jute-woven cots in the open place in front of the house, staring at the moon and clouds overlapping it. There was no electricity in the village. Nothing could be done, not to speak of Internet or computers. Even today in most villages and towns of Andhra Pradesh there are long power cuts of 4 to 8 hours at a stretch. Power is given to agrl. farms during night. Today one farmer who went to his farm to switch on his motor was attacked by a python in his motor-pump-room. The courageous farmer, with his foresight seemed to have carried an axe with him, immediately hit it on its head and trunk and killed it. Of course, pythons existed centuries back when electric power did not exist. Today, in spite of power, we need courage. Occasionally, I read from US Press and Internet, that some American towns and counties also face power interruptions (though not at our scale). It gives me some vicious pleasure. There is somebody to suffer with us.