bhaskar saikia

We live in a world cradled by convenience.

Each morning begins not with the rising sun, but with the soft glow of screens. Alarms buzz, notifications blink and our fingers reach instinctively for updates. We’ve wrapped our lives around apps and algorithms—wallets turned digital, conversations distilled into emojis and knowledge reduced to trending headlines. Everything feels immediate, disposable and within reach.

But war does not wait for convenience. When conflict stirs, the world doesn’t unravel with a bang, but with a slow, unsettling silence. The power flickers. The network stutters. The mobile towers stop working.

Suddenly, QR codes become unreadable relics, your favorite delivery app returns an error and the battery icon—once just a number—feels like a countdown.

The internet, once the symbol of connection, becomes a breeding ground for misinformation. In the absence of verified news, forwarded messages replace facts and confusion spreads faster than any virus. Panic travels in capital letters, while truth gets buried under the weight of speculation. What once helped us feel connected now leaves us unsure, distrustful and overwhelmed.

So we turn away from the noise.

A battery-powered torch becomes a lifeline when darkness stretches beyond evening. An old radio, dusty but dependable, crackles to life and reminds us of the slow, deliberate rhythm of analogue days. Hard cash emerges as the only reliable currency when digital payments fail and ATMs fall silent.

Gone is the obsession with instant gratification. In its place comes a raw, stripped-down clarity: to have clean water, warm food, charged batteries, medicine, fuel and the comfort of knowing your family is safe. Conversations return to the dining table, not as texts but as words. Children rediscover stories in candlelight. Neighbours begin to knock—not to complain, but to care.

We begin to remember what we once forgot: that the essentials of life are not found in the cloud, but in human connection.

When the grid goes silent, we are forced to listen—not to headlines or hashtags, but to the heartbeat of our own lives.

And perhaps, in that silence, we rediscover something more enduring than technology: the ability to endure itself.