Tukki

It's the inverter, also called a UPS, also called a big rechargeable battery. The one here is about fifteen years old, and consists of a car battery hooked up to a fancy metallic device with some dials on it. It could be the reason that the electricity bill is about double what it was before load shedding, despite the electricity supply being reduced by about 45 hours a week. The light just flickered. It is a single bulb, one of those energy saver mini tube lights that hangs down from a light bulb socket.

The radio, a small portable black one with the antenna coming out of one corner, plays on:

"There has been a helicopter accident near Everest Base Camp..."
"Uranium has been seized at the Nepal-India border...."
"Political parties have registered their candidates for proportional elections..."
"And now for international news..."

and so on.

It is the only voice in the room, the news reader, slightly rushed, pausing at foreign names, and some numbers, somewhat authoritative. It rolls on.

This is an old room in an old house. The walls are thick, filled with mud and maybe some brick. Whitewashed on the inside, but chalky. Wires running across the walls, an uneven ceiling- plywood, nailed to the beams that formed the ceiling underneath- painted a shiny white. Habitable and quaint. You wouldn't expect this much from the outside. It must be about a century old.

Someone in the room laughs. An old man. An old woman asks, "Ke Bhayo?"
He just laughs, she gives up asking. The question was passively asked.
There is some news about the Pakistani elections, some news about people defying the curfew in the south of Nepal. Some people shot and injured, one woman gravely.

Now they have moved on to sports. The reader stumbles, and says, "Please listen to that again," and gets it somewhat more right the second time. He is on a roll now. He mentions an inter-school basketball tournament. Half of the school names are English words. They are said in English typified by Nepali sounds. Now the boisterous theme song for the news, and the news reader says some of the headlines again. The theme song plays again, the news reader says goodbye. Immediately, the radio starts to play an ad announcing that the water supply in Kathmandu is being improved and for that to happen, people have to control leaks and breaks in the pipes. The ad is a dialogue between a buzzing sound and a person, where the buzzing sound is a talking tap. The tap lectures him to conserve water, and chides him for not knowing that the water supply in Kathmandu is about to improve. The tap can't believe that the man does not know the news: there will soon be water for everyone in Kathmandu. The man is in disbelief and immediately exclaims:
"What? Water for everyone in Kathmandu??"
The ad ends.

So, it turns out that a talking tap lecturing on recent developments, in a perfectly understandable human voice is not as surprising as the suggestion that everyone in Kathmandu will get water.

The room is silent now, the radio off. Some pots and pans are clanging in the kitchen.

The inverter is now off. The energy saver bulb started flashing like a disco light as an indication that power was running low. But there is still light in the room coming from six white led's, mounted on a thin, long, neck of a device which consists of just a battery box in addition. It has a small red switch on the side of the box, and has three of those big round batteries inside. It is about that size- four big batteries arranged flat, 2 by 2- and has a wire encased in a thin pipe protruding out from one end. And at the end of this pipe is a broader plastic encasing, green, just slightly bigger than six led's placed in two rows of three. Imagine, a turtle with its legs pulled inside, and a really long thin neck, looking at the sky. And on the underside of its neck it has six led's. This device is called a Tukki-Mara. A Tukki Killer. A replacement for a Tukki perhaps.

This one faces a mirror so that the light spreads all over the room. Its light happens to fall on a flashlight, one of those flimsy metallic ones with the circular switch which is used to turn it on at will if the longer switch is in the right position, inverted and standing next to it, turned off.

Our stainless steel plates are laid out now, and the Tukki Mara has been moved to oversee the three of them. It is dinner time.