By Sepala Ilangakoon
When the lights go out, ‘Lite giya’ in Sinhala, without warning, pandemonium reigns in the household. "Where is the torch? Where is the kerosene? Why is the kerosene bottle empty? Why are the lamp chimneys still sooty and not cleaned?"

The lantern, correctly called Hurricane Lantern - ‘Lantharuma’ in Sinhala, is more useful than the usual lamp, ‘Lampuwa’ as the former can be swung to and fro on the wire hanger while walking outdoors even on a wind, rainy night as the chimney does not crack when a drop of water falls on it, quite unlike the lamp chimney. Also, true to its name, not even a hurricane can blow it out; but a single puff is sufficient to blow out the flame, after the chimney is lifted by the small lever. It’s an amazing, ancient contraption - perhaps used by Florence Nightingale - ‘The Lady with the Lamp’- to attend to the wounded soldiers during World War 1.

To get back to the home scene, when the lights go out without warning, jobs are left half done, since the kerosene lamps or the more recent Petromax lamps are not lit in advance of an unknown time.

TV watchers find the sets also going blank when the lights go out, invariably losing the most vital and engrossing part of the movie. The Ceylon Electricity Board is duly cursed.

The long hours of work on a subject, laboriously done on the computer, forgetfully not ‘Saved’, gets wasted by being automatically erased off the ‘Memory’. Start all over again. Curse the CTB and remember to ‘Save’ para by para.

"Where is that confoundedEtorch?" Stumble in the sudden dark, groping your way to the bedroom and knocking over that valuable Venetian glass vase in the process. Curse the CEB.

The mosquito repelling electric mats are carefully loaded into the burner and switched on before you go to sleep, when you are free of the wretched mosquitoes, only to wake two hours later by the ubiquitous moskies humming in your ear, having delighted returned when the lights went out, thereby switching off the mats. Damn the CEB!

Mosquito nets are fool proof only if the tears are immediately mended and only if meticulously tucked in under the mattress all round the bed. The secret here is to raise the curtain just high enough to sit on the bed and to pull your feet up briskly, before the moskies creep in before you! But you find that the net has substantially restricted the cool breeze during those hot nights; so you reach out and switch on the fan. No luck ! You have forgotten that the power cut is on! oh! That CEB!

The mosquito coils are certainly effective, if your throat can hold the pungent fumes, but some are allergic and the coils are taboo.

The moskies have an inbuilt alarm clock and make their presence felt punctually at 6.30 p.m. They are not high fliers and are quite content to keep low. Those uncovered human ankles are ever so luscious and irresistible to them. So much so that this category of mosquito is called ‘Ankle moskies’. You also find it irresistible to scratch and scratch the itchy spot, but there is an instant remedy which you may not have heard of - Aqueous Cream- a jar of which is easily prepared at a pharmacy and cheap. A dab is an instant cure.

There is a little known but highly effective mosquito repellent — Citronella oil. Citronella is an aromatic grass that grows almost wild in the low country dry zone areas and its oil is distilled for pharmaceutical use. Its aroma is piquant or acrid, whichever way you choose to describe it. Citronella oil is readily available and very cheap by the fluid ounce, in most ayurvedic pharmacies. Smearing a few drops of the oil on the exposed bare skin, will most assuredly keep the moskies at bay.

You wake in the morning at the strident din of the alarm, vexed after a broken night’s sleep, only to find that you have woken at 2.00 am. according to the bedside clock which, to get its own back on you at this ungodly hour, has stopped working immediately the light went out!

Sometimes, even though you had set the alarm for 6.00 a.m., you have overslept till 6.40 and you are late for everything, because the wretched alarm clock had stopped unknown to you, thanks to the power being cut at 10.30 p.m. when you were fast asleep!

You are late already and you hurry with your morning ablutions, but when you are shaving with your time saving electric shaver, there goes the power cut and half your face is unshaved! Where did you put your safety razor and where is the new packet of blades you bought the other day against just such an eventuality?

Intending to shave later, you go for your early morning jog. You meet your jogging friend and he is staring at you unbelievingly and then stammers, "What?!! You shaved your head the other day saying you were keeping up with the current trend and now you have shaved half you face! Are you going mad or have you found an ultra mod vogue?

Ignoring the jogger’s rude and nasty crack, I stop jogging and go home before some one else spots my face and says something insulting. On the way, I am amazed to find all the bright yellow fluorescent street lamps are still blazing at 7.30 a.m. when there is plenty of daylight. Equally, I recall that even before it was dusk the previous evening, the same street lights were glowing brightly! Power saving did the CEB advise? My Foot!!