No Pill For This Chill

The pace of evolution of science is scary. Who would have thought that we would put a man on the moon? Who would have thought that something called the internet will change the way we think and do things? Hell, we have even figured out how to put a mop of hair back on Harsha Bhogle’s bald pate. There is virtually nothing that is exempt from the inexorable progress of Science – except, of course, air conditioning.

Air conditioning has been around for the past many decades, and one would expect that by now we would have got it nailed down to a point where one just has to think it and the optimum temperature would waft through a room in no time, right? Not even close!

Just yesterday, I was in a full day meeting. Small room, about 15 X 20 feet. As I was late, I plonked myself on the only available chair. Unfortunately, the A/C was positioned right across from where I sat. Within the hour, I was being hit by a blast of cold air to the point of distraction. I spent the next hour moving the chair close to the table and then backing away and then behind another chair to shield myself.

Finally, unable to bear the torture, I had to ask someone to help me. Life seemed a little better for a while, till I realized that I was beginning to sweat. The air had become stuffy and oppressive, while people at the other end of the table were now beginning to shift their chairs uneasily from the chill…

Soon enough, the oppressed lot at the other end made a demand for the remote and I was back to square one. Followed by the collective brainwave to switch the contraption off for a while. In ten minutes, the room was filled with CO2 and its miserable occupants were close to swooning. At which point we had lost the battle and just opened the windows. Now we had to conduct the meeting with our voices battling the constant honking from the traffic below. By the end of the day I was fully drained, while the contents of the actual meeting were still kind of blurry.

This is not just a small room problem. I have been in large ballrooms of hotels where I have either frozen to death or been fried to a crisp or sometimes even both in the course of a single meeting. The less said about flights and theatres, the better.

And I’ll never forget the time when I moved into a new office, some years ago. It is a very unsettling feeling when, in the middle of a Delhi winter, you have to enter your room and, rather than shed a layer of insulation, actually put on an additional one. Apparently, the problem was that my room was close to the compressor of the central A/C system, so if they made my room inhabitable, office rooms further away would meltdown. Finally, the problem was resolved – by sticking a few pieces of A4 paper on the ceiling to partially cover the vent and reduce the blast. There is no end to our capacity to innovate…

I have not been spared even in the cozy confines of my home. While things are ok when I drop off to sleep, by 2 am the room has shifted to a point that is on the same isotherm as Alaska. Back to good old manual intervention – through a sheer process of trial and error, I have perfected a very precise 27⁰ angle at which the door will need to be kept open to maintain the right balance. This angle, of course, has to change to change to 52⁰ during winter …

Why the hell should we buy a piece of equipment and then spend all our time intervening manually to achieve something that that equipment should have done in the first place??

It has become commonplace to derisively refer to people in ivory towers and air-conditioned rooms as being allegedly disconnected with real life. I’m not sure about ivory towers having never actually seen one, but I can tell you that those in air-conditioned rooms are in a position to observe all the cruelties of life play out real time, through the day, as they seek to achieve the purported comfort of the optimum temperature. They deserve our sympathy, not scorn.

Though I must also say that this phenomenon has its occasional upsides. For example, have you ever sat through a meeting to, for example, evolve the vision of the company? This is a meeting where employees obsess over existential questions like “Who are we and what do we do?”, “Do we want to be the most admired or the most respected company?” and “Do we want consumer delight or consumer ecstasy?”. Needless to mention, these meetings have the potential to last for about a month with no outcome in sight. The simple thing to do is to make lots of tea and coffee available, turn the A/C on full blast and insist that nobody leaves the room till the vision has been agreed upon. Nothing pushes people to conclude a meeting as much as bursting bladders and suddenly, an amazing ability to converge on a vision is on display.

On a more philosophical plane, I believe people go through three phases in their corporate careers and all of these phases can be observed in the seat position one takes in meetings. In the “Need to make maximum impact in minimum time” first phase, one jockeys for a position near the head of the table to be visible. In phase 2, as life’s harsh realities start setting in, the key determinant is arms-length access to the biscuit tray. In the final and battle hardened phase 3, it is all about observing where the A/C is and ensuring that one is away from the blast. Nothing else matters. Not even the biscuits.

Unfortunately, Science has ticked the A/C box and is now focused on random things like putting Man on Mars. To my knowledge, nobody is working on how to make this contraption actually do what its name signifies. Mentally, I’ve moved on. I’ve classified A/Cs under the head of “Things that do not do what the name claims”, much like Fairness Creams, Hair Growth Therapies and Weight Loss programs. It’s amazing, once you face up to it, how easily the mind adjusts to the limitations imposed by life. Talk of conditioning!

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