Love in the time of Loadshedding

It was Waseem the Great’s birthday and all the land waited in anticipation for the Great to awaken to see his 25th year and bless then with yet another year of immense greatness. In Seemland, things always went according to plan..except on this fateful April 16th…when Eskom did not receive an invitation due to the demerit system in Seemland…the Great’s peasant friends, Q, Niki, Mj and Jo and of course, the Great’s Good brother, Shiraz (who engaged most of his time in shopping and wrapping gifts in a very macho and manly way in his white shirt), decided that this year would be a birthday the Great would never forget…where sparkliness reigned supreme and laughter filled the streets and every store in town had sales of teal clothing.

Niki: hey! Like. Stop sprinkling all that glitter and butter salt around – it getting into my ghd’d hair.
Shiraz: mine too.
Q: sorry for breathing.
Meanwhile, on the other end of Seemland, mj was on his black horse, Tata, going to fetch Joe. Now on Joe’s end of the world, Escapade, there were some wild animals – which Mj was wary of (in a statistical way of course) but today was different…
‘Hmm’ Joe thought as she slid the cupcakes into the oven, ‘I wonder what’s keeping MJ..’

If she only knew…that the blinking traffic lights had blinded Mj’s trusty steed and had flung him from its rear straight into the euphoria of the centre of the land the wild animals inhabited. With this new being which had obviously descended from heaven (or hell considering what his t-shirt said), they ordained him as their master (because he had masters degree). To his surprise he realized they had also been preparing for the Great’s feast and had taken the celebrations to a new level, using the flashing malfunctioning traffic light as their disco ball and making Mj reenact his great descent over and over. Jo however, was unaware of the drama (coz she was only used to a high standard of theatre like Font) and as she woke up to the sounds of ambulances every morning, the commotion was nothing out of the ordinary and she continued folding and popping out her 3 million origami stars– besides, she lived with the Great AK, so she had nothing to worry about.

Back at the Great’s palace, Q was draping fairy lights, Shiraz was wrapping gifts and writing very emotional cards..and Niki was decorating her Tom Welling shrine while conducting an experiment about the DNA of Q’s fishies as they suspiciously resembled Saif Ali Khan…
Q: ummm…its 3am, can’t we take a nap before the Great wakes up? Im tired. I didn’t nap today – and I took 7 buses and…I had mince for lunch. What a bad day.
Shiraz: no, Im already late for work. (his schedule had been totally screwed by the load shedding schedule and now supper was at lunch, breakfast was at supper and lunch was at breakfast..and 7de laan was still at 6.30pm. At this point, nobody really knew what time he started).
Niki: like.hello? It’s the Great’s birthday duh- it’s a public holiday. Now Q? when did you last see saif?
Q: umm..hey! I can say big words….floxinoxi…something
Niki: supercalifragalis…tic.

It was then that all the lights in Seemland went out, leaving the entire town in darkness (except for Q’s tiara which twinkled like the stars and a few lucky peasants who had sold their souls for cell phones). One of them was Mj, who bought a weapon of a phone, which he used to thunk the over elated monkeys on the head and escape. However, it was his unfortunate fate to jump into an Escapade elevator – which was occupied by AK whose curiosity was piqued by the noise after 3 hours.
AK: ‘Oh, Mj its you – you know who I am!! AK!’
MJ: ‘Really? You don’t say – sign my chest.’
In that very odd predicament, load shedding intervened and there they were..stuck.
‘#8!@!!!!’ they both said.
‘you wanna hear a joke?’ said Ak
After about 10 minutes… ‘no’ said Mj..
Another 45 minutes went by…and Mj changed his mind.
Upstairs, Jo was really worried now – the origami stars were not popping the way they should have…and somehow she sensed that something had happened, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was..and then it hit her.
‘Your mother!!!’ she screamed, running to the kitchen to rescue the cupcakes, which she had forgotten about.
‘Ya Allah! Thank gawd for load shedding!’ as she contemplated the horror of her darling cupcakes being burnt and shuddered for 2.5 seconds until she heard a stifled scream coming from the lift amid the excitable rendition of ‘Dekho! Dekho!’ and figured that MJ and AK were stuck.together. After frantically drinking some tea and dialing Q’s number, Jo assured Mj and AK that help was on the way.

While Q and Shiraz rushed to save the world from the combined forces of MJ and AK, Niki decided to stay home and finish the experiment (but we all knew she wanted to spend her time ceremoniously circumnavigating the Welling Shrine with scented candles). As fate would have it, Q and Shiraz were pulled over by a very angry cop who was no doubt having the worst day of his life. All the pleading and flashing (thanks to Q) couldn’t have saved them from the hefty fine imposed on this dark night just two seconds away from Joe’s building. But when Shiraz got back in the car…Q was nowhere to be seen.

‘What the hell!’ he exclaimed!
He looked for her in the cubby, under the seat and finally in the cup holder, but he just could not find her. Suddenly a wild inhabitant rushed out of the tree and grabbed him and reunited him with Q, who was proclaimed Queen of Escapade (because she had a tiara) and they promptly named him King – because he had great hair (some opinions in life are universal). It was fun at first, but they soon realized that with the lack of necessities such as a ghd or jewelry, this place was just not working for them. After much struggle and running around, a compromise was reached and they bartered a lock of hair for their freedom.

What many in Seemland did not know, was the special powers a certain trio possessed. The ‘Powder-puff’ powers which included Shiraz aka Buttercup, Q aka Blossom and Niki aka Bubbles, were struck by lightening one fateful night and received the powers of bubblewrap – flexibility, invisibility and the power to pop things. And of course, the package came with standard garden variety flying powers which often didn’t have such great results. Soon AK and MJ were rescued from the tortured elevator and Mj rushed into sajdah position and proclaimed his gratitude repeatedly until he developed pins and needles. Shiraz flew up to Jo’s balcony, not surprised to see her once again on the ledge, battling with the urge to take a leap, and brought her back down to earth.
“Wow! Shiraz, you’re so strong!’ squealed a hoard of 352 sparkly teenage girls who had gathered to watch his display of strength.
Soon enough, Q donned her invisibility powers and popped the few braincells they had.

With all in tow, they found Tata, who had been pimped and souped up by the wild inhabitants and who now had a mini dvd player, blinged out hooves and some hectic dreads and blinkers with a tattoo on the back saying ‘glayer.’ On arrival at the Great palace just in time for the Great to wake up, they sensed a certain scent in the air…a dangerous one.
Q: does somebody smell Juicy Lucy food?
Mj: no, their food has no smell. Or taste.
Joe: it smells like when you over-ghd your hair..
Shiraz (whose electronic engineering education was certainly starting to pay off): oh my god!! Something’s burning! And it can’t be electrical coz its load shedding time! There must be fire!’

And they rushed to find Niki, who had been affected by all the exchange of Powder-puff power by Q and Shiraz and while peacefully gazing at Tom, experienced a surge in power and the candle exploded, setting Tom and all his paraphernalia on fire. Amid the flames, there was Niki, holding on and trying to salvage the remaining items of clothing she had ‘borrowed’ from Tom’s dressing room.
Q: omg Niki!! (secretly she was hoping Niki’s dna test results were fried as well, to eliminate the chilling evidence that she had indeed done the deed with saif).
Mj: save the lana picture niki!!
Jo: wait! Stop! I wana put sprinkles in the candle wax- it’ll look pretty.
Shiraz: ooh you can do that? That’s so cool!
With all the exclamations and bashing into glass vases in the dark, the Great awoke at 3.05am (yes, all this took 5 minutes- time stands still in Seemland and there are enough places to chat in).
The Great (looking at Niki’s hair which was kinda crackling but it still looked good): hey, what happened here?
Mj: we be burning.
Q: yeah, it just went from AM to PM
Niki: its 4 in the morning
Mj: I like when girls kiss girls
NIki: ew
MJ: sorry seems to be the hardest word
Niki: its too late to apologize.
Jo: wait – Im turning my lovelight on…
Shiraz: Q? where’d you go? I miss you so..seems like its been forever since you’ve been gone…
Q: baby when the lights go out…I hear you calling…
Shiraz: we’ll get lost together, till the light comes pouring through.
Silence followed for like 6 seconds…(they were waiting for the light to come pouring through)
Mj: paan rocks…oh hey! Happy birthday Waseem!!
Q: oh right yeah! That’s why we’re here! SURPRISE!
Shiraz (hugs waseem) *sniff happy birthday my favorite brother in the world.
Niki: Tom..is Tom ok?
Jo: never mind the load shedding- we’re all here together, that’s all that matters…
The Great: Baby, its fact.