“Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th’encircling gloom,
Lead Thou me on!
The night is dark, and I am far from home,
Lead Thou me on!
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see
The distant scene; one step enough for me.
I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldst lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path; but now
Lead Thou me on!
I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears,
Pride ruled my will. Remember not past years!
So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
Will lead me on.
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile,
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!
Meantime, along the narrow rugged path,
Thyself hast trod,
Lead, Saviour, lead me home in childlike faith,
Home to my God.
To rest forever after earthly strife
In the calm light of everlasting life.”
The above is a wonderful hymn written by John Henry Newman in 1833 [Link to Wikipedia article]. But this post is not about the hymn itself nor have I suddenly turned all religious and holy that I go around publishing posts about lovely hymns asking the Almighty to lead me out of darkness. Instead, this is about the wonderful little Android app – Tiny Flashlight [Link to Google Play Store] 
Now this app was one of the first that I installed on my Android phone when I first bought it two years ago. And believe me, this has helped me in more than one sticky situation in that time.
Some of the places where it has been of use are –
- All those nasty unscheduled power-cuts that we used to have in Chennai whenever there was a torrential downpour and the inverter would run out of charge
- During those nocturnal walks down the staircase of the Chennai apartment during many of these power-cuts
- To search for things which have fallen under a cot/table in a remote dark corner of the room where the tubelight fails to illuminate
- In the labor room when my wife was delivering my daughter
- Ok, the one above was added just for ‘dramatic effect’, but I actually used the Flashlight in the Ward where my wife and daughter were kept and there was a power-cut for almost 2 minutes when the entire Ward was engulfed in darkness
- In the rest room when I was happily doing my ‘duties’ on the ‘pot’ and the lights went off leaving me in complete darkness (in fact this happened just a few minutes ago, which inspired me to write this post to honor this wonderful little app)
So, there you go, a free app created by some anonymous Russian goes on to literally ‘illuminate’ my life, and that I believe deserves a post on my blog. After all I have praised more than a few random people and random occurrences on this blog and something like this app deserves more than a honorary mention, don’t you think.
I would love to hear more about some of the apps you use on your phone or what would be even better was if you could narrate some instances where you have used a flashlight (not necessarily on your phone, but in your regular offline life).
Image courtesy: http://www.zazzle.com
