“Is it cooling?” Yes. “Do
the vegetables stay fresh?”
Yes. “The freezer and ice maker are
working?” Yes. “then what is the problem?”
“आवाज़ ही नहीं करता ” (It doesn’t make any sound) The lady says innocently. The
service technician gives her an awesome smile and responds, “this is the new technology madam, it works
silently.” And. We all laugh
from the other side of the television screen.
This was a
refrigerator commercial that was aired very regularly in India in eighties and nineties. Not sure if you may remember that commercial. It so vivid in my memory, that it plays in mind and always makes me smile.
How innocent and
yet how wrong that consumer was. The refrigerator is doing its job fine, but still the
owner calls for repair, because it stays silent.
We all can laugh at that and it ends here. However, on a more serious note we all
do something similar in our lives. Although not with refrigerators only, but also with
people. And mostly people who matter.
I look around in families,
society, schools, offices, politics, media and I see many such refrigerators. No one
bothers if they freeze water to make ice or if they keep the vegetables cold
and fresh; but are happy knowing that those make sound. And in the recent times at many places, the sound they make has become more important attribute than their performance at cooling.
And like
refrigerators only times the need for cooling takes precedence over the sound
is when the ‘sound maker’ has the vegetables rotten and the
ice-cream has melted. But in most cases, it is too late when one discovers. The contents entrusted
to the refrigerator are rotten already.
As parents, as
teachers, as professionals as friends, as voters, as managers, as coaches, as
mentors and as people, it is our responsibility to nurture and
take care of those that are cooling with or without making sound. Cooling is
the only important function for any refrigerator, sound is just a byproduct
(wanted or unwanted)
We owe this to
ourselves and to those who will follow. After all most of the past inventions
that we all take for granted in our lives today had a “non-sound making refrigerator”
(commonly called an introvert) behind them.
