Sometimes I Think We Don’t Give Enough Credit To Air Conditioners


No, really. It feels like we all take air conditioners for granted. I don’t have to lay it down to you about the current status of Earth’s climate, especially in certain drought-hit places of Maharashtra. Other than the time when they provide us with the magical feeling of luxurious coolness and helping us resume living our lives, no one talks about them.

And when we do, it’s all blames and curses…

  • When they are not used, they just hang in the corner of our living rooms without uttering a word, innocently anticipating that we turn them ON
  • When there is a slight surge in the temperature, we quickly bludgeon the remote control or the on-board control to death, trying to regain the coolness
  • When after months of non-usage during the cooler seasons (at least in the middle-class households of India), they fail to start, and we curse them for drilling a hole in the home budget for their unavoidable yearly/monthly maintenance
  • When they make unrehearsed, and sometimes deafening, noise in the middle of the night
  • When the remote control starts losing its juice and the screen digits play the game of fading
  • When the air conditioner repairer charges us a fortune by fleecing us because we don’t know how air conditioning works
  • When they are turned ON and the preset mode has changed all because of the air-conditioner ghost; while in fact the kindergarten kid in the house had used it to hit the washing machine for being rude to the refrigerator, during which buttons were inadvertently pressed and mode changed
  • When the car switches OFF because the driver couldn’t hold his feet on the clutch for few more seconds and he now has to switch OFF the A/C before turning ON the engine because of the popular idea
  • When the A/C dial in the car is on 2 because the owner is thinking economical and the people sitting in the seats behind are sweating
  • When after the coaching classes of early 2000s are done raving about the presence of a dozen of them in their classrooms
  • When 3-year olds fret about not being able to reach the A/C switch because they are few inches short in height
    • But after they find a way, they now have to find the remote control, too, which is kept on the dressing table that is slightly above the switch board
  • When people not owning a permanent house have to call an operator to move the unit to their new rented apartment
    • When the coolant disappears into thin air during this movement and DiCaprio indirectly curses the owners for being impractical sods
  • When amateur operators play surgery with them and there are now creaking sounds
  • When a new buyer does not care about the manufacturing of the external unit and is happy that his air conditioner is red in colour
    • When after few months, the repairman questions the buyer’s instinct for buying an aluminium-made outdoor unit instead of copper
  • When a room is not fully insulated (or covered for gaps) and the conditioner fails to cool the room quickly
  • When it’s time to sell the old unit on OLX that no one wants to buy but still we upload its photographs because the online marketplace released a new ad yesterday
    • When our hopes of buying a new unit with the money received from selling the old unit is shattered because no one has called us asking for it and it has been 8 weeks since we posted the free OLX ad
  • When they are compared with their cousin, the central air conditioning system
  • When the blame is on them for the unusually high surge in the electricity bill
  • When the water pipe drips and there is water all over the floor in the corner of the room because the men who came to install it are unhappy with their job
  • When the manufacturer disowns you as its customer
  • When that Croma shopkeeper tells you that Blue Star does not have service centers in your city, so you settle for Panasonic because Katrina Kaif endorses it
  • When a local repairman tells you to replace that costly component, but the problem was with the coolant pipe
  • When you realize that maintenance is to them what update is to Windows OS

Can we at least now talk about how many lives air conditioners save on a daily basis?


2 responses to “Sometimes I Think We Don’t Give Enough Credit To Air Conditioners”

  1. Okay, guess I’ll take a guess that you live in or near Mumbai. Well, I enjoy your writing – not just about movies, but also about the ever popular subject of air conditioning (I live in the northern Nevada desert so that statement is true). Two items in your list really stood out for me – the one about the air-conditioner ghost who changed the remote buttons and your final comment comparing A/C maintenance to Windows OS updates – very good!

    It’s hard to leave a new blog that I just started enjoying, but my pillow is now screaming my name so . . .

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