I’m from a place in India where power outages were frequent and familiar. The lights would go off just as we were about to sit down for a meal of chicken curry, spiced okra, and hot rotis with a side of homemade yogurt. Someone would whoop on the road outside, and the power cut would fall like a blanket of silence. There would be a mad scramble for candles with my mom yelling to the maid-servant in the kitchen, “Meena, where did we keep the candles I bought from Modern Bazaar last week?”

There would be a minute or two of deepening silence, finally broken by our landlord Dr. Gupta\’s reedy voice floating up from the ground floor level. One of the two servants would be ordered to start up the generator and there would be the sound of the machine being whipped to life. It would catch at the fifth attempt, and a low whine would fill the building. The Toshiba generator only powered the lights on the ground floor and an eerie glow illuminated the rest of the building.

My brothers and I would try not to fidget as per Mummy ji’s instructions, “All of you stay in your seats otherwise, I’ll really give you something to cry about!” The windows were flung open to catch any drifting breeze in the hot humid summer night. As the night deepened, I would hear the sounds filtering in through the open window —stray dogs barking in competition from neighborhood to neighborhood, the occasional truck rumbling by, someone singing lustily from the embrace of the night—a drunkard or  a laborer returning home late—the drone of an airplane, the rustle of a mouse scurrying across the tiled floor of the lavatory, the sound of a door opening or closing here or there on the middle floor of the three-storied house we lived in.

The open window brought in various smells, because this house was not right in the middle of the city. It was not very far from the Yamuna, and a highway separated this building from the river. And the breeze whose murmur I could hear now brought in strange exotic smells from the river: the smell of curry, the sudden fragrance of jasmine, the stench from old grease and burning cow dung. And as the city fell silent, so did we —the only sound in the dining room was laughter and the clinking of utensils against dishes that could be heard through thin walls in every direction.

So, this year when PG&E announced that power outages would be sweeping across the Bay Area, I wasn’t alarmed. I poured myself a stiff drink of Bourbon. I put an 80s record on the gramophone that had been collecting dust since my last bargain-hunting foray into Connaught Place’s alleys. I slid up the handle and with my tumbler in my hand, I settled into my yellow Sheraton Fancy Chair as the soothing sounds of Lata Mangeskar wafted over me.