Turn OFF the SWITCHES when you leave the room.

Turn OFF the SWITCHES when you leave the room.  

"Turn OFF the SWITCHES when you leave the room. ". This statement haunts me all the time whenever I leave a room, any room.   

In my father's polite voice -- all the time, every time.  

It used to irritate me to no end.  It irritates me to no end. 

When he was there and now that he is not there.  

What's the big fuss about this statement.  

This statement probably rings true in probably every Indian household of kids born in the 60s 70s and the 80s We all live with it.  We all learn to live with it. 

For someone who did his school homework in a room illuminated by a kerosene lamp, I was not brought up in times of electricity surplus which Calcutta is used to now.  Electricity was a luxury no matter how rich you were in the 70s or even in 00s.   

I thought I would outgrow it with time as the years passed by but I did not.  It's so very ingrained into the mind and the mind set that it will probably die only after my death.  

Following the instruction was not a choice.  When did we really have a choice with our parents whether it was about the choice of vegetables or the clothes that came home.   Ok that's an exaggeration from my side but electrical switches no choice.  Turn off the switch. Do not simply turn off the appliance or the equipment from the remote.  

Turn off the switch.  

So when God yanked the plug out of my dad's power socket,  apart from the pain that would never leave us, along with the fond memories that would never leave us. I thought,  I would never hear or  get to hear his voice every time I would leave a room.  

I was so wrong.  I always heard it. 

It was god damn irritating. 

So I thought, I would simply leave the switches on.  I never turn off the switches when I am at home.   I like to say it's Diwali everyday at home.  All rooms to have the lights on. Every room I enter after coming home.  I turn on the switch and I leave. 

I always use the remote to turn off the television. 

The AC power is always on. 

The microwave is always on.  

The led display always running the scroll  WELCOME TO MICROWAVE COOKING.  It's been 7 years the switch has never been turned off.  I think Panasonic would be proud of their product.  Even they would not have a clue of the hardiness of the product they made for India sitting in Japan.  They surely did a good job.  

The extension chord is always powered on.  Screw the risk. 

Anybody turning lights off before sleep time faces my wrath.  

I just don't turn off the switch at home.  --  I want to hear that voice one more time  HIMANSHU turn off the god damn switch.   But I know it will never follow me.  I want to get rid of that voice and statement in my head.  

It does cost money to run all the lights and there is plenty of statistics available to read about the amount of electricity wasted by keeping electrical appliances on sleep mode and not turning the power OFF.  When I was in GE, they could track PC with their monitor in sleep mode across the length and breath of the country sitting in Gurgaon and issue warning memos.    It's just about how passionate you are about driving yourself.   

My approach towards my wasteful behaviour was never appreciated by my wife and that I was  setting a bad example for my child.   Despite being an exemplary example of patience and virtue on most parameters, most of the time.  

I failed miserably when it came to electrical switches.   

I refused to call out after my son - "Turn off the switch. " or " Turn off the lights " or 

like my wife goes " arjun bathroom Ki light khuli kyon hai.   "

Well that's her prerogative if she wants to haunt her son.

I restrict my self to the basic instruction of please turn off the air conditioner in the bathroom or please turn off the air conditioner in the living room.  Now this basically simply means please close the bathroom door and the door that leads to the living room from the bedroom. 

Things change, people change, attitudes change, approach changes, beliefs change, belief systems change, the things that haunt  you change. Everything has a trigger,  triggers are identified only in hindsight, never does realisation dawn upon you instantaneously.  

2016

I happened to visit a childhood friend and stayed with him and his family for 3 or 4 days at  a stretch several times    In close continuation over a period of 3 months,  so that's like 12 days or so in winter and spring.  

Now you are not artificial with your childhood friends and nor are you pretentious. You are yourself and they are themselves.  

Like I said I am not habituated to turning off the lights when I leave the room unless I am about to leave the house.   Well that's the way I am.  While I am conscious about leaving the room and the bed and bedsheets and duvet cover the washroom and bathroom and other things in perfect order that no one ever has to clean up or tidy up after me.  Like the lady of the house expressed  " Its like the room was never used. "  

But light. That's another story.  I step out of the bedroom to eat my breakfast.  Come back to a room that has its lights out.  Hey I did not do that.  I step out of the living room to get some water from the kitchen spend ten minutes in the kitchen chatting and come back to the empty living room  with the lights out.  Hey I did not do that.   It's like magic wherever I leave and go and comeback the lights are turned off by magic and its not like I was away for long.  

I am an observant person by nature without any reason or any additional effort from inside.  It's instinct.  

I realised my friend and his son were the culprit to my discomfort. However they were like magicians.  Lights turning off as in offices that are motion sensor controlled.   You walk in, the lights turn on.  You walk out the lights turn off, behind you.  In my office if you sit "still" for too long even the light directly above you turns off and you are left to the illumination of the laptop screen.  Now all this happens in the office to save electricity and its expenses.  I will not dwell upon it here.   

Coming back to my friend's home and the magician and 5 year old elf at work.  

I figured out that all the illumination was with LED bulbs and a few CFLs, Now considering that this was a four  year old house and the average actual age of a CFL is around 7 years which is not really a recording of date to date or any marketing gimmick statistics.   It's simply the age of my Son and the time when we actually bought our first CFL which the shopkeeper used to mark on the body to note the one year guarantee. Well those CFLs bought then are dying now.     

The primary illumination in our house remains tube-light not for any other reason other than the fact that my wife and I love the cool daylight white light, but that is another story on preferences on the kind of lighting we like, love or hate.  

So this 2 storied house with 5 bedrooms and the living and the dinning and kitchen and pantry and all the trappings of the good life  Is completely illuminated by LED.  

Having figured out the modus operandi of the magician and the elf for arguments sake I brought up the topic of our parents habits coming into ourselves and how switching off the switch was a touchy subject from childhood.  Well as it turns out it was for him too.  But he never uttered those haunting words to his child.  He just led by example.  He turned off the lights when he left a room. He never asked anyone to do it in case anyone left it turned on. He simply went and turned it off.  Kids follow best by example.   The kid picked it up in no time as soon as he was tall enough for his fingers to reach the switch board, he was his father's replica as a light turning off machine.   

For further arguments sake I said dude that's a lot of money invested in LEDs that consume very little electricity so it does not really make any sense to turn it on and off every time you enter or leave a room.  The electricity saved is negligible and given the subsequent monetary saving also being negligible, why indulge in the entire activity of ON and OFF when there is no bloody saving worth even a packet of Tata salt.  That's the funny part.  

His response was pretty simple and it quite reopened my father's haunting statement In my mind.  I always heard the statement , I never heard where it was coming from.  

It's not about saving.  It's about not wasting.  ITS ABOUT NOT WASTING. Spending money to save money is for idiots.  It's about not wasting electricity.   The electricity that I save is used somewhere else.  That someone might be a city slicker or a man in the village I don't know.  What I do know and I live with happily is knowing that  I did not waste electricity.  

Of this, now, I am sure that it was not about saving money by not wasting electricity for my father too.  Had it been so he would have saved his own life by not wasting away his lungs.  

Well the lungs were his own. The electricity was a common society's resource not to be wasted just because you could afford to waste it.  

I have been meaning to write this for a very long time ever since I came back home from my friend's house but never got around to it despite having thanked him for enlightening me on such a basic life transforming activity.   It's not everyday that you discover that something does not haunt you any more.  There are somethings that you can't thank people enough for, but that does not mean that you don't say the magic words.  

All my wasteful years of indulgence and kinks of creature comforts and doing your own thing which includes having a friend who used to call up home to request someone to turn on the aircon when he was 13km away so that he could walk into a perfectly cooled room when the temperature outside was 40 degree plus.   It was not wasteful behaviour.  It was just indulgence in self gratification after spending time in the scorching sun and the snow blizzard in sub zero temperatures with equal élan to earn a living, without ever complaining.  Man I have earned it.  But even for him I guess as he became a father he was setting out the right example.   

We are our own self for a short period of time in life sometimes that phase may be a bit longer from the time we actually step out of our parents shadows to the time we actually become parents ourselves.  We automatically try to become the perfect examples for our children which is like saying that we become somewhat a replica of our own parents in more ways than one.   

PS. This note is dedicated to Vishal and his awesome wife Priya along with his 5 year son Aviral.     

Every thing has its own time in our life       Like this fridge magnet.   

Every CFL and LED switched off counts.   

Picture attached.  

I will switch off for India.  Will you ?  

Somethings have a calling like this electricity thing. It's bombarding you from all sides.   

You just have to connect.  

Which brings me to the movie "karate kid." Where Will Smith's son goes to live in China with his mom.  

The hot water is not working.  

Jackie Chan, the maintenance guy comes and says all perfect. Flip switch off.  Turn on for hot water. Turn off after using.  How does it work in your country ?  

Drey says : "We don't have no switch in America." 

Jackie Chan says : "It's Time to have one."  🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟