Earth Hour is a global energy conservation movement where people voluntarily turn off their lights between 8 PM and 9 PM in their local time zone on Saturday, March 29th, 2008.
Other nations in the world have experienced blackouts but in the United States, that seems like a foreign concept. We might even panic – What will we do without lights or TV in the evening? Pulitzer Prize winning Indian novelist, Jhumpa Lahiri gives us an example in her short story "A Temporary Matter." She tells us a story of a husband and wife who were strained in their relationship when they were notified by the city that they would experience blackouts for several hours for several evenings in a row. Shukumar and Shoba (the characters in the story) are at a loss as to what they will do. Left with nothing else but to face each other, they begin to face the problems in their marriage by spending hours over a candlelit dinners and getting honest with themselves and each other again.
They found that they looked forward to these lights-out hours because they were not distracted by their modern lives. If you and your family and friends prepare, Earth Hour could be a fun, intimate and unusual way to spend an evening. It may even show us all that our modern lifestyle isn’t as critical as we think.
Looking for more?Video featuring the history of the Earth Hour movement which began in 2007.
Writer - Jhumpa Lahiri, "A Temporary Matter" in the collection of short stories called "Interpreter of Maladies" (1999)
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