A 'hi' would be really nice...

United States, United Arab Emirates, Poland, Germany, United Kingdom, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia – this long list of countries from across the globe do not represent any new international coalition. The list represent the geographic profile of the readers to this blog if the ‘Statistics’ revealed by Google are to be believed.

The map that depicts the audience visually shows that folks from Alaska have even read pages of this blog at some point of time. Despite the newspaper that I work for possessing a readership of over 10 lakhs nationwide (as per latest IRS figures), I do not think anybody reads what we write beyond Coimbatore. 

Even folks in Chennai do not give a damn about the power cuts in Coimbatore or a dance festival that takes place in a temple near here.

To find out that some folks from Alaska and Saudi Arabia have read my posts on power outage in Coimbatore and on whether grilling food would make a good substitute for LPG gas, is humbling.

As strange as it may sound, I started this blog a few months ago only after I began to fear that my organization could close down their website (for reasons already known to most newspaper readers) and I might lose the articles that I had written for the newspaper.

Being a lazy bum, I do not cut out my special stories and articles to save them for posterity. And so, this blog was opened to merely cut and paste the stories that I do as part of my job as a journalist to help me in future.

Now that a handful folks out somewhere (or everywhere) are accessing this blog, I just want to know if this is for real. If it is not too much of a trouble, kindly leave behind a comment when u visit this page so I know that these Google figures are not yet another statistic churned out by experts or systems that don’t exactly exist. Even a simple ‘hi’ would make my day.

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More on the power cuts… The positive aspects of a prolonged power outage, learning to enjoy the dark days!

While Coimbatoreans have been generallyfuming at the increase in scheduled and unscheduled power cuts over the last several weeks, the long hours of darkness seems to have brought about considerable positive changes to lives of many of us here.

For starters, the city police are a happy lot as there has been a significant dip in the number of burglaries and thefts reported in and around the city. In the past, when thieves ventured out in affluent neighbourhoods during late hours they were certain that folks would be sleeping peacefully in the comforting cool temperatures ensured by their air-conditioner.  Thanks to the erratic and intermittent power cuts, not many have really slept through the night of late and wake up almost every other hour to wipe off their sweat making life difficult for the burglars.

Until now, candle light dinners were only meant for rich, romantic couples and restricted to posh restaurants. Middle class families are now waking up now to the romance of candle light dinners as their lanterns have been dumped long ago and emergency lamps can provide only a few hours of power at best.  Candles have become the only source of light for several middle class families during dinner time now and provisional store owners here attest to that fact claiming that there has been a significant increase in sales of the colourful wax sticks.

Lovers in the city no longer have to resort to the VOC Park here for cuddling up any more. The park which is already overcrowded with cozy couples at every dark corner after seven in the evening night after night has now seen a dip in footfall. The local street corner is just as good for holding hands and a romantic walk as the electricity board has assured that the lovers' privacy remains intact even in their neighbourhood during evening hours.

The student community too seems to benefit from the outages as they do not have to blame it on messy school managements and bad tutors for their lack of performance during exams. Thanks to the electricity board, parents can no longer point fingers at their wards for not staying up late and studying.

As for journalists here, these power cuts ensure that there are enough ‘stories’ on any lean day.