namma mejura

I under-estimated the power of the pull ‘Naidu hall’ (Naiha) have among women.

It is now a fashion for bigger shops to spread out to other cities in the region. Alukkas, Jos Alukkas & Bhima are the big name jewellery shops from Kerala, now firmly established in Madurai within the last 2 years. Chennai based mobile shop chain ‘Univercell’ & ‘mobile city’ opened 3 – 4 shops in Madurai.

So when Naidu hall opened their showroom at bye-pass road, it seemed they are following the trend. But the buzz it created among the women are tremendous. For the first three days, it seemed like a mega event, with a musical party thrown in at the evenings. Feedback from school, college going youngsters were that the shop is the hot topic among girls.

The bye-pass road is growing fast in it’s stature. It may soon need a better name.

Certainly a reason to joy. The synthetic athletic track is ready at race course ground. It is heartening to note that it is the 2nd such track in Tamilnadu. The first one is in JN stadium at Chennai.

The track is waiting for VIPs to formally open. Sadly, the national level, Federation Cup Junior athletic championships (July 1 & 2) cannot be held there because of this. The champhionship was held at Armed Reserve ground.

Gone are the days of continuous power supply, with declared full-day maintenance power-cuts twice a month. The summer that went by had a real spurt in the sale of A/c.s in Madurai. The sight of small individual houses sporting tiny split a/c boxes just above the sun-shade of their front door is not uncommon.

We don’t know whether this put an unmanageable demand on the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board (TNEB). But multiple power cuts has become a daily occurance for the last one month.

On an average, there are 5 power cuts a day. Some of them are 5 minute power-cuts, which looks like they are shifting from one power grid to another. But at least one of them will last anywhere between 45 minutes to 1hour 15 minutes. There is no standard time schedule for this, and the duration of long power-cut varies every day.

Officially they claim that there is no power shortage, and these power-cuts are only maintenance power-cuts. We all know that TN Govt., always fights shy of accepting power shortages, irrespective of which political party is ruling it. Their efforts for not providing fodder to opposition parties are legendary.

The questions is, are they deliberately varying the time duration & time schedule of these nearly 1 hour power-cuts, to stop from being branded as acute power shortage?