This pedestal fan fascinates
me today. It is telling me a story of 10 years ahead and 10 years before.
What does it mean for us Indians
to move from this table fan to a ceiling fan and then to air-conditioning. I
presume those movements are not defined by prosperity. Because if the weather
is cool throughout the year, even a rich man has no use of the air-conditioner.
It is defined by climatic changes.
What are driving these
thoughts today? Me using this pedestal fan for the night at my friend’s place at Dehradun
for the first time in the 10 years that I have been visiting her.
Dehradun is a valley,
surrounded by hill stations like Mussoorie, lying around 200 kms north of Delhi
city, at the foothills of the Himalayas, providing a beautiful getaway for the Northern
cities.
A separate room is always
reserved for me. On the bed is kept a quilt to keep me warm in the nights. Whichever
time of the year I came, I had a good sleep amidst the fresh mountain air seeping
through the windows.
Her home is a home built during
the British days. Like most European homes there is no provision for a ceiling
fan in the rooms. Ceiling fans came into fashion more in the USA and then
India. In any case those days most of the homes at an altitude never kept any provision
for cooling as they never needed it. My friend, over the years installed a
ceiling fan in her bedroom and the dining hall. The main hall and the inner bedroom
still do not have a ceiling fan.
Over all these years I slept
in her home in that inner room I have never needed any fan. Now sleeping in the
same room, even during the night, I have begun carrying this fan from the
hall to my room. Earlier the fan was put to use only on those rare hot
afternoons.
That means, not only
cities, but such places too will move from table/pedestal fans to ceiling fans and then to
air-conditioners? I assume that if I visit her after 10 years, her home will need
air-conditioning? The ceiling fan too will not be enough?
How do we view all of this?
A once upon a time cool climate regions getting hotter.
Yawn. Yawn. Are we not
all talking of global warming? I sound like I am discovering something new
today.
But when you experience this
kind of global warming at places that are meant to be our getaways for
vacations and for fresh air, our respite from hot cities, you wonder what will happen to us humans.
Add to that the cost of
power and the usage of water to wipe off our sweat several times during the
day.