For four or five days, there was no electricity in our village.
Rain and storms had disrupted the supply. For a day or two, even the sun barely appeared.
Yet our house continued to function.
A few years ago, with the help of a government subsidy, we installed solar panels on our roof.
Most of the time, electricity from the grid was available. The solar system was there, working quietly in the background.
We knew we had it.
We used it.
But we had never really experienced what it could do.
Then the electricity disappeared.
The sun rose.
The batteries charged.
Our phones charged.
The lights came on at night.
And then something unexpected happened.
People from the village began coming to our home with their phones.
They needed to charge them.
For a few days, our home became a small charging station.
We had never planned this.
The solar panels had been installed for our household.
But when the electricity disappeared, the same system became useful to many people.
Nothing about the solar system had changed.
The circumstances had changed.
And because the circumstances changed, we noticed something that had been there all along.
A system installed for one household had become useful beyond that household.
That made me look at the solar panels differently.
They had been there all along.
Perhaps this is true of many things we live with.
We become familiar with what we have.
Familiarity makes things ordinary.
And sometimes it takes an unusual circumstance to make us look again.
For years, the solar panels were simply part of our house.
During these few days, they became useful beyond our household.
We did not change the system.
We did not add anything to it.
We simply discovered more of what was already there.
Written and photographed by Aniruddha Singh
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