India's massive grid failure Tuesday stranded travelers, shut down water supplies, snarled commutes and left residents sweltering in the heat. An estimated 600 million people were affected around the country. Here are a few of their tales:
Arindam Saha, 45, an employee with a credit-rating agency in Kolkata:
I usually take the metro rail to commute between my home in Dumdum [in the north], and my Theater Road office [in the south]. Today I left the office at 6.30 p.m. and by the time I reached home, it was well past 10 p.m. Generally, the journey takes only about 40 minutes.
What I saw out on the streets was something I had never seen before. There was utter chaos. People were out on the streets in huge numbers trying to get home, trying to hop into the next available transport. Not only were buses filed to the brim, people were hanging from all sides. I just could not manage to get into a bus.
Finally I managed to get a taxi, which I, too, shared with someone going in the same route. There were traffic snarls everywhere in the city and after a struggle of over three and half hours, I managed to reach home.
Kirti Shrivastava, 49, a housewife in Patna, Bihar:
There is no water, and no idea when electricity will return. We are really tense, even the shops have now closed… after all, until when will they run on inverters [batteries]? Now, we hope it is not an invitation to the criminals!
Shakeela Bano, 68, a housewife in Deoria City, Uttar Pradesh:
We don't have water due to the power shortage! Since our cold storage is dysfunctional in our village, the prices of vegetables are skyrocketing. Adding insult to injury, there is a rumor that there will not be any electricity for a long time.
People are collected in groups in front of their houses, to gain comfort in crowds.
Mukteshwar Prasad Sinha, 62, from Dhanbad, Jharkhand:
[There is a] water problem because of no electricity. [There is] no tension because of security yet. If the blackout continues we might face security threats.
Jaswant Kaur, 62, who boarded a train from Ludhiana to New Delhi this morning, and missed her connecting train to Nagpur, and spent an additional 1,000 Indian rupees (about $18) to reach New Delhi:
Now my pocket is empty. I am hungry. I am tired. The government is responsible for all the hardship to me today. The government should compensate me for the loss.
India's Ministry of Power announced Tuesday evening that the electricity had been largely restored in Delhi and the Northeast. Yet outages remained common in eastern India and elsewhere in the north, leaving millions of people in the dark.
How did India's power failure affect you? Please leave us details of your experience Tuesday in the comments below.
