The 90%
This is not an essay or a story. It is a recollection of my thoughts and I wouldn’t entirely rely on it to be factually correct.
You shouldn’t either.
My nephew is 8 years old, owns a smartphone, and was watching YouTube on it. But still, the stranger part of it was that he was watching another kid play with toys. It was kind of a toy review thing and a channel entirely dedicated to it. We were sitting at a family gathering and I asked him, “You’ve got tons of toys yourself. Why don’t you play with those? Why do you need to watch some other kid play with toys!?” His head didn’t even budge a degree. “Chora, put the phone down now!” cried his mother. Then started the cries and the blame game and how he loved his father more than his mother but he finally put his phone down. As the screen of the phone dimmed before it locked I had a peek into the YouTube channel he was watching. It had a few billion views in it. Wait… what? Billions? That’s a lot of nephews.
Though I never had to cross a river to reach school as my parents did, I never considered myself to be born into the generation of technology either. I was brought up right in the between. Technology, for me, felt like it came a little late to Nepal. In the 20th century, the west had relied on computers so much already that they predicted the Y2K problem would collapse the economy. The Y2K problem was when computers failed to recognize the year 2000 A.D. after 1999 A.D. because it only stored the last two digits. Meaning, it would store 2000 A.D. as 00 which meant 1900 A.D. Nepal, however, didn’t even hear about this predicament or we would’ve heard about it from our mothers already. Nepal was particularly safe due to two reasons: one, Nepal relied almost entirely on paper data and two, Nepal was in the year 2057 B.S.
Personal computers and Nokia phones started to pop up here and there at the dawn of the 20th century along with cybers and those dial-up connections with the iconic sound that I can’t even type. Then it was like wildfire with the internet, laptops, blackberries, PlayStations, TVs, DVDs, LEDs, and I was almost in the generation of technology! Almost, because for the devices to work they needed power and with the load shedding on, they were all a lump of lard. (Fun fact: Lard is animal fat though most find it to be synonymous with poop.)
Load shedding was at its peak 8 years back when we were left without any electricity for about 10–12 hours a day. Fledging government, lack of supply management, under-construction hydros, and dry rivers were all to blame for it. It didn’t matter much during the school days for it was the vacations that I needed a game plan for. Ten years old me had to devise a perfect plan — so flawless that would utilize every minute I had electricity — to watch the TV and play some video games.
The load-shedding schedule hung at the side of the cupboard in our dining room. Every night I’d have a look at group 4 and come up with a plan for the next day. After a few days, that is if the schedule didn’t change, I’d have the timetable memorized. The idea was simple: if the outrage is in the morning sleep till late, if it’s in the night sleep early and if it’s during the day get mentally prepared to get bored to death.
But it never went to plan. I always woke up early but the mornings were always easy to go by, doing school assignments or following my mother around the house and mirroring her doing puja or simply reading a diary of a wimpy kid. I could never sleep early in the nights either. I’d cuddle up in my mother’s lap after dinner and look at the glimmering night sky through the window as my parents talked about stuff. We’d have an emergency light, as they called it, turned on in the corridor making it easier for anyone who wanted to use the loo. My sister was fond of listening to pop music on the radio and that is how she spent her nights. But the days, however, were excruciatingly boring. It was the time when I had to get creative. I’d turn the lights switch on and visit the room now and then to find out if the lights were on. There were several things I’d do that made the days go by. I’d make boats and put them on a bucket of water and centrifuge them with my arms shoulder-deep until they were all lumpy which I would then use to hit objects. Or go after insects that I am so afraid of presently, catch them, name them, make them my pets and try to feed them but they eventually died and it’d be a whole new funeral procession. Dashain was the best, for the weather was perfect to have so many failed attempts at flying a kite. Sometimes I would be successful at it and everyone in my family would be amazed at my extraordinary feat though the sky would be full of kites already. Winters went by with a magnifying glass. As I basked in the sun, I would take an old newspaper and burn engravings on it bringing out the artist in me that I never was. The water would be too cold to play with so I’d let the grease do its job by dancing on top of the water making vortices in and out that looked like mythical creatures. With every kid bored in the neighbourhood, the street football session went on all year long. Tournaments between various streets, collecting money for a new football, and betting on that night’s match was a routine.
But every time, every time my mom shouted, “Babuuuuu, battiiii ayooooo!!!” (the electricity was back on) I’d run off leaving everything that I had on hand and turn my computer on. As the stabilizer clicked, the hard disk zoomed in thousands of rpm, and the DVD drive made sure it was working correctly I’d scream “OH! THANK GOD!”
As a kid, I always wished I had a life like my nephew. I probably would’ve given anything for it too. Though I’m really glad to have spent my childhood the way I have, for I don’t have to say that my fondest memory is some other kid playing with his toys. I still remember the days of tending to my mother’s broken vase, jumping between beds as the famed mask of Zorro, fighting imaginary crimes with my best friend, and now being able to recollect the memories whenever I want to.
My mom one day asked me and my sister to clean out the store room. As we went through our childhood books and copies, I found a rather interesting notebook. It was a collection of quotes that my sister had written down that she deemed interesting, contemporary to watch later or bookmarking. Of the many I read that day; one still looms over my head to this day. It read, ‘Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you respond to it.’
Some wise words sis.
