Summer in Bangladesh has always been cruel, but this year the soaring temperatures have been accompanied by a far more relentless load shedding issue. As outages stretch from minutes into hours and return repeatedly through the night, they begin to dictate how people live. Across households and workplaces, the recent spell of load shedding has turned ordinary routines into daily struggles.

The gap between power supply and demand is forcing millions to navigate humid nights with emergency lights, battery fans and fading patience. The toll shows up not only in tired eyes but also in electricity bills that have climbed sharply, leaving households struggling to balance comfort and cost.

Ruma Akhter, a housewife and mother, was already frustrated about the unusually high electricity bills for the last two months. She said it was already difficult to live with the financial stress, and now she’s not even getting the power supply. Without fans, the heat has been particularly difficult for her children. “When they come home from school, they can barely cope with it.”

Children are fanned to sleep by hand. The adults are even frustrated because they cannot rest properly. "I think we get electricity for a maximum of 20 minutes and then it’s gone for two hours," shared Soyel Miah, who owns a grocery shop. With outages continuing through the night, uninterrupted rest has become difficult before another working day begins.

Power cuts can also interrupt the water supply and bring daily household tasks to a halt. “When there is no electricity, we do not get water either. Cooking also becomes difficult,” said Md Ashraful Islam, a worker at a shoe factory. By now, they have accepted that on some evenings, meals will be late and baths will be skipped.

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Beyond the disruption at home lies a deeper fear for those living on daily or monthly wages. When the power goes off, work stops. In garment factories, production lines fall silent. Some factories are running at half capacity, while others have temporarily shut, leaving workers unsure if they will be paid at month‑end.

For Shurovi Jahan, a garment worker, the uncertainty hits every evening. “Today, there has been load shedding almost the whole time, so the garment factory is closed. If it stays closed like this, I will not get paid at the end of the month as I used to.”

She is now worried about covering her basic needs.

Small business owners echo the same anxiety. With customers turning away from shops left in the dark and production at a halt, many are earning far less than usual and a few have paused operations entirely until the supply stabilises.

The problem reaches deep into study rooms as well. It has become an agonising test of endurance as students open their books by the light of flickering candles, fighting suffocating heat.

"Whenever I sit down to study in the evening, load shedding starts," shared Tanzima Sharmin, a student with important exams in three months. "It’s really difficult to study in this heat with just candles. I can’t even sleep properly at night, so I feel sleepy at school.”

In rural areas, where power cuts can last two to three times longer than in cities, the impact is even sharper. Sleepless nights bleed into exhausted days.

Taken together, these experiences show that load shedding is no longer merely a few hours of interruption. As people rearrange their lives around an uncertain electricity supply, the true cost is measured not only in hours spent in darkness but also in lost sleep, unfinished work and growing anxiety about the days ahead.